Leadership

Professor Hywel Williams

CDT Director

The CDT Director is Professor Hywel Williams, a computational scientist focused on problems that link social processes and environmental change. He is a faculty member in Computer Science, and affiliated to the Institute for Data Science & Artificial Intelligence and the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter. He is a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute, the UK's premier facility for artificial intelligence and data science.

In addition to his leadership role in the CDT in Environmental Intelligence, Hywel leads the SEDAlab, an active research group of postdoctoral fellows and PhD students, with diverse interests in computational social science and environmental data analysis. He is former Programme Lead for MSc Data Science and related programmes. He teaches courses and supervises student projects in data science and social network analysis. He has published >60 research papers in leading outlets and his research has been funded by EPSRC, ESRC, NERC, HEFCE, Leverhulme Trust and several commercial sponsors, amongst others.

Professor Sarah Hartley

Deputy Director

I'm a qualitative social scientist, based in the Department of Management and working in interdisciplinary environments with natural scientists, engineers, regulators and policy-makers. I research and teach technology governance, particularly in biotechnology and data science in global health, conservation, and agriculture. I have multiple projects exploring gene drive governance, particularly knowledge co-production, risk assessment, and responsible innovation in gene drive mosquito and squirrel applications. I have a PhD in Politics and Environmental Studies (University of Toronto).

Dr James Dyke

Deputy Director

James joined the University of Exeter in 2018. He designed and then led the cross-department programme MSc Global Sustainability Solutions. In 2019 he was appointed Assistant Director of the Global Systems Institute. In 2022 & 2023 James served as the lead academic for the 2023 British Science Festival

As well as his academic duties, James is a science and environment writer. He is the environmental columnist for UK newspaper i, and has written over 100 articles for international publications that includes The Ecologist, The Guardian, The Independent and The Conversation. His book Fire Storm and Flood: the violence of climate change was published in 2021 by Bloomsbury imprint Head of Zeus. James is a regular contributor to UK and international media that includes BBC radio and TV.

Dr Ernesto Schwartz-Marin

I am a Science and Technology Studies scholar working in the fields of biomedicine, forensics and citizen science. I conduct in-depth ethnographic research of race & genomics, and develop participatory action research models to intervene in humanitarian crises via DNA bio banking, grass-roots databases, and citizen-led science.

Dr Sareh Rowlands

Sareh Rowlands is a computer vision scientist interested in computer vision applications such as robotics and medical diagnosis. Her background includes using non-Euclidean geometry in visual recognition and implementing computer vision approaches in robotic scenarios. She uses her expertise to model human actions in order to anticipate or predict an action before it occurs.  This facilitates enhances human-robot collaboration. This is mostly achieved by analysis and learning relevant datasets that capture human actions in a complex task using techniques such as deep learning, graphical models and etc. 

Benno Simmons

I’m a Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 Research Fellow and proleptic Lecturer in Ecological Data Science. I’m an ecologist and conservationist who uses use data science, AI and technology to help understand and reverse biodiversity loss.