She was the founding-Dean of Sussex University’s School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences, a pioneering centre for research into intelligence and the mechanisms underlying it—in humans, other animals, or machines. Her research involves an unusual combination of the humanities, science, and technology. Her research is highly interdisciplinary, and her main interests are in artificial intelligence, creativity, and computer art. Outside Sussex, she has lectured widely, to both specialist and general audiences, in North and South America, Europe, India, the USSR, and the Pacific. She has also appeared on many radio/TV programmes, in UK and elsewhere. Her work has been translated into twenty foreign languages.

She was awarded an OBE. in 2001 (for “services to cognitive science”), and besides her Cambridge ScD,  she has three honorary doctorates (from Bristol, Sussex, and the Open Universities).