Joel Azzopardi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Malta, with an affiliate academic positions in Geosciences and the Institute for Sustainable Energy. With over two decades of academic and research experience, his expertise covers AI, information retrieval, knowledge discovery, environmental and oceanographic data systems, and data-driven decision support. He earned his B.Sc. (Hons.) and Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Malta. His career started at the Physical Oceanography Unit, where he was developed the operational frameworks for ocean and meteo forecasting systems and data services. Since 2013, he has actively contributed to AI education, research, and interdisciplinary applications at the Faculty of ICT. Joel has contributed to over 20 national and EU-funded projects, integrating AI with environmental modeling, knowledge discovery from textual data, and operationalizing marine services. He also developed university platforms like URECA and A4QA for research ethics and quality assurance. His recent research focuses on AI enhancements for meteo-marine data, cross-lingual legal information retrieval, and using LLMs for public sector document understanding. Joel is a member of the University Research Ethics and Quality Assurance Committees and received a 2024 Faculty of ICT award for his contributions to the University's Research Ethics Process.
