Professor Hywel Williams announced as new Co-Director of Joint Centre for Excellence in Environmental Intelligence
Professor Hywel Williams has been appointed as the University of Exeter’s new Co-Director of the pioneering Joint Centre for Excellence in Environmental Intelligence (JCEEI).
Professor Williams, an expert in Environmental Data Science, takes up his new position in the JCEEI with immediate effect. He replaces Professor Gavin Shaddick, who stood down from the role in late 2022.
The ground-breaking centre brings together world-leading researchers from the University and the Met Office to spearhead the development of Environmental Intelligence and promote the UK as a global trailblazer in this fast-growing new field. It is designed to find solutions to some of the world’s most pressing environmental challenges.
Speaking about the appointment, Professor Williams said: “I am delighted to have been given this opportunity to work alongside Prof Kirstine Dale at the Met Office, to drive the vision and aims of the Joint Centre in this crucial area. This an exciting area, with huge potential to bring together the vast range of expertise and experience from across both our institutions to address the challenges we face in adapting to changes in our environment.”
Professor Williams is an Alan Turing Fellow, Director of the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Environmental Intelligence and lead for the SEDAlab. His research focuses on problems that link social processes to environmental change, and applies complex systems thinking and computational methods to problems in social sciences, environmental science, evolutionary ecology and artificial intelligence.
Research in the Joint Centre focuses on utilising the power of data to transform our understanding of a changing environment and find solutions to the challenges that this presents. Current areas of research include climate change, clean air, urban heat, biodiversity and flooding.
