Uber named Zoubin Ghahramani as its new chief scientist based in in San Francisco, the company announced. He will oversee Uber’s AI Labs, its recently created machine learning and artificial intelligence research unit, and will lead AI/machine learning strategy companywide.

Ghahramani joined Uber through its acquisition of Geometric Intelligence. He is a professor of information engineering at the University of Cambridge, where he leads a group of about 30 researchers. He was a founding member of the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit in London, one of the founding directors of the Alan Turing Institute, the UK’s national institute for data science, and a faculty member of Carnegie Mellon University’s Machine Learning Department, among other accomplishments.

“Artificial intelligence and machine learning are absolutely central to Uber’s mission,” Ghahramani said. “Uber’s opportunities are unique among major technology companies, because they center around the real physical world, which is complex and difficult to predict. We have to navigate around the real world, develop perception and action systems for our self-driving cars, and understand, predict, and make more efficient the experience for our riders and drivers.

Ghahramani’s appointment is the first real good piece of public relations Uber has gotten since a deluge of scandals hit the company beginning in late February, Geektime reports. In quick succession, Uber’s HR department was accused of covering up sexual harassment, the company was sued by Google subsidiary Waymo for allegedly stealing LiDAR designs, and senior VP of engineering Amit Singhal was forced to resign over undisclosed sexual harassment allegations back when he was with Google.

Additionally, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick on March 7 announced it also seeking a chief operating officer. This followed an apology on Feb. 28 for his behavior after Bloomberg published a dashcam video of a heated exchange between Kalanick and one of Uber's drivers. “This is the first time I've been willing to admit that I need leadership help and I intend to get it,” Kalanick wrote in a post on the company’s web site titled “A profound apology.”