Rakhi Rajani, CPsychol
The future is rarely invented inside a single discipline.
The systems that shape civilisation have always emerged at the edges, where science meets culture, where technology meets power, where human behaviour collides with new tools and new ways of seeing the world. That is where I have spent my career.
I build and run R&D labs that bet on the long view.
For more than twenty-five years, I have worked across AI, genomics, neuroscience, emerging technology, and institutional transformation, building systems and ventures designed for problems that do not fit neatly inside existing categories. I have worked in Silicon Valley research labs, national science organisations, global consulting firms, and frontier technology environments, often operating where scientific, technological, and institutional shifts converge.
I studied psychology and computer science together in the late 1990s because I believed intelligence could not be understood through machines or humans alone. At the time, that intersection sat outside conventional thinking. Today, it underpins some of the most important technological shifts of our era.
At McKinsey and QuantumBlack, I led teams working on human machine teaming. As Chief Digital and Strategy Officer at Genomics England, I shaped the organisation’s evolution from a government-funded genomics initiative into a long-horizon public sector biotech institution, building national-scale AI and emerging technology capabilities to translate genomic insight into population health impact.
Across every role, the constant has been the same: seeing what the future will require before it becomes obvious, then inventing the systems, capabilities, and ideas needed to bring it into existence.
Current Platforms
Space Civilisation Lab
Humanity is building rockets, habitats, robotics, AI systems, off-world manufacturing, and planetary infrastructure. Far less attention is being paid to the civilisation that goes inside them. The Space Civilisation Lab explores the scientific, technological, institutional, and human systems required for civilisation beyond Earth. -> spacecivilisationlab.com
Chief Cognitive Officer
Engineering human-machine intelligence for organisations operating in high-stakes, high-complexity environments. -> chiefcognitiveofficer.com
Thinking Aloud
Future Tense explores long-horizon questions across AI, neuroscience, quantum science, and civilisation-scale systems. -> rakhirajani.substack.com
The Near Term, co-authored with Jen, a NASA astrobiologist, examines the technologies and ideas shaping the future of space science and human civilisation beyond Earth. -> thenearterm.substack.com
Advisory
I serve on the boards of Motionhouse and The Epilepsy Society, and previously advised R2 Data Labs, a Rolls-Royce aerospace and defence industrial AI venture. I mentor founders and researchers through Imperial Enterprise Lab and am a Visiting Scholar at the Blue Marble Space Institute. I have lectured at Central Saint Martins, the Royal College of Art, and the University of St Gallen.