What is your role at the Turing?
I’m a Research Data Scientist in the Turing’s Research Engineering Group, and am part of a team focused on the area of environment and sustainability.
Tell us about your journey before you joined the Turing…
I worked as an academic in the field of palaeontology, looking at how communities of ocean plankton respond to climate change over millions of years. This involved a lot of coding to build a dataset of fossils with half a million records. I then combined this with predictions from global climate models to run statistical analyses investigating the relationship between the environment and biodiversity. We found that in the oceans, temperature is the main driver of species richness. Over geological timescales, warmer surface temperatures create more ecological niches, which leads to more diverse plankton communities.
What are you currently working on?
My current project is trying to predict the movement of clouds over short timescales (known as ‘nowcasting’) based on the last few hours of satellite imagery. This is in collaboration with Open Climate Fix who are working on a model to more accurately predict the amount of energy that will be generated by solar panels over the next few hours, to allow the National Grid to have fewer gas power stations on standby. Accurate cloud cover forecasts are crucial to being able to predict this. I am working with a group of academics and software engineers, and my focus is on developing the tools for running the different AI models and allowing us to compare them fairly to identify which is best.
What motivates you to work in this area?
From my previous work, I developed an understanding of the dangers of climate change and biodiversity loss. I wanted to move into a job where I felt like I was able to help develop practical solutions to these problems. At the Turing I get to work on lots of fascinating projects relating to these themes.
What has been your highlight at the Turing so far?
In March 2024, a team of us from my previous project, Scivision, had a demonstration stand at AI UK. This was a really fun opportunity to showcase some of our work, and to see all the other interesting projects that the Turing is working on.
When not working, what can you be found doing?
In my free time, I enjoy spending time in the countryside, walking or doing hands-on conservation work. I also enjoy singing, and am part of a large choir in Oxford.