UCL AIED EdTech Labs cohort ‘25-’26
Adaptemy participated in the UCL EdTech Labs AIED cohort 25-26 offered a rare and valuable space where research and entrepreneurship genuinely intersected within the edtech landscape. The programme brought together researchers, founders, and practitioners around a shared commitment to evidence informed innovation and a learner first approach, with sustained attention to ethics, impact, and educational value. UCL EdTech Labs’ has been the first dedicated AIEd cohort; it’s research-led, product-driven, and very practical.
Over five months of asynchronous engagement, the cohort was able to participate in dialogue between theory and practice, enabling startups to refine their models through research perspectives while allowing researchers to engage directly with the realities of product development and scaling. This reciprocal exchange challenged the often separate worlds of academic evidence and entrepreneurial momentum, demonstrating how they can be productively aligned, through sustained, evidence based consideration.
The programme culminated in a live presentation in Canary Wharf, where Conor O’Sullivan presented Adaptemy to an audience of researchers, peers, and an international delegation from Brazil.
This moment symbolised the cohort’s broader ambition: to position AIED not merely as innovation for innovation’s sake, but as a research grounded, ethically informed endeavour with global relevance where learners are at the center.
On the final day, in the final week running concurrently with BETT we engaged in round table peer to peer discussions at the UCL engineering space, IdeaLondon, as well as connecting with UCL Knowledge Lab and a delegation from Poland. This created a space for collective reflection on the future of AI in education and what it means for learners, teachers and the diverse environments that we are situated within. These conversations highlighted the importance of sustaining dialogue between research communities, policymakers, and entrepreneurs, reinforcing the idea that responsible AIED and EdTech development depends on shared epistemic and ethical frameworks.
Overall, the UCL Labs AIED cohort illustrated how evidence, ethics, and entrepreneurship can be meaningfully integrated. It offered not only professional learning, but also a model for how educational innovation might be shaped by dialogue, responsibility, and a sustained focus on learners.
Learn More…
IDEALondon UCL Education Innovation and Edupreneurship (EIE) Society UCL Institute of Education UCL Centre for Digital Innovation (CDI)
