We are very happy to announce a call for PhD project proposals, in the final round of the SENSE Earth Observation CDT recruitment, for studentships starting October 2022.
The key facts are:
All PhD projects will focus on using Earth Observation data, with many projects also expected to make use of advanced computer techniques such as machine learning
16 PhD students will be funded in this cohort, we will advertise ~32 projects
Note, in order to ensure we maintain a good success rate for the advertised projects, not all submitted PhD proposals will be advertised.
To encourage collaboration across the SENSE community, all supervisory teams must have co-supervisors from at least 2 institutes (Leeds, Edinburgh, BAS, NOC)
We can provide support in linking you up
We welcome additional co-supervisors from other non-SENSE institutes
All students will be registered at the Universities of Edinburgh or the University of Leeds (50/50 split)
All students will undertake a 3-month industry placement
We have >20 CASE partners available for matching with academics, and your own industry connections are welcomed
We are running academic & industry virtual mixer events on the Tue 24th August to help connect academics in different departments and institutes, and industrial partners, to attend please register your interest here
Project proposal submission deadline is the 19th September 2021
To submit a PhD proposal for the October 2021 cohort, fill out this form
SENSE’s recruitment committee will select ~32 of the best projects that align with SENSE’s specific remit to advertise. For further advice and top tips about how to submit a good SENSE PhD proposal, and the full recruitment schedule, please see ‘SENSE PhD proposal writing tips’ below
If you have any questions or if you’d like any support with your project proposal please get in touch with Ruth Amey at Leeds (eo_cdt@leeds.ac.uk) or Eleanor Graham at Edinburgh (sense@ed.ac.uk ).
We really look forward to hearing from you.
The SENSE recruitment committee
SENSE PhD proposal writing tips:
SENSE has a recruitment committee with members from its four institutes (Edinburgh, Leeds, NOC and BAS) who will select the projects to advertise in October. Only the best projects that align with SENSE’s ethos will be advertised. Please ensure that all criteria are met and that project descriptions have sufficient detail and give tangible outcomes.
Successful project proposals have:
High quality science that is clearly described (compulsory)
Strong focus on Earth Observation (compulsory) and advanced data science techniques (strongly encouraged)
Environmental science as subject area (compulsory)
Huge congratulations to SENSE student Max Lowe for publishing his first paper, from his Msc thesis, in EGU journal Solid Earth.
Max says –
This study estimates the gravitational contribution of former tectonic plates subducted into Earth’s interior (slabs) to the Alpine gravity field. Different seismological studies identified various slab segments beneath the Alpine mountain belt within Earth’s upper mantle. However, the position, geometry and extend of those slabs vary strongly in those studies. In addition, some recent gravity models do not account for such heterogeneities in the Earth’s mantle.
Here, the sensitivity of gravity measurements to variation in slab position, geometries and volume is tested. Therefore, two competing slab configurations are defined based on seismological findings. In addition, the gravity contribution caused by slab segments within the Earth’s mantle is estimated by forward calculating density distributions based on three different modelling approaches. a) direct conversion of seismic velocities to density distributions, b) density variation based on predefined slab configurations and c) calculating density distributions based on geophysical and petrological modelling taking rock composition, temperature and pressure into consideration.
We find that the gravity signal caused by the slab segments is sharp and can be separated for the different slab segments for the gravity field measured at near surface height. At satellite altitude the contribution of different slab segments cannot be separated anymore. We showed that slab segments can contribute up to 40 mGal to the Alpine gravity field. This is significant and demonstrates that future studies should account for densities variation within the mantle caused by slabs to provide a meaningful representation of the geodynamic complex Alpine area.
SENSE are delighted to have been nominated for a Leeds Partnership Award this year for our work on improving equality, diversity and inclusion in recruitment procedure.
The SENSE team were nominated for going ‘above and beyond’ in their work on improving equality and inclusion in SENSE’s postgraduate recruitment procedure, and for continually pushing this agenda in the School of Earth and Environment and across the University.
Paid Summer Internships for Undergraduate Students – deadline16th May 2021
We are delighted to advertise eleven paid summer internships for undergraduate students with supervisory teams at the University of Edinburgh and University of Leeds.
These internships will allow talented individuals to explore how using satellite data and machine learning/AI techniques can monitor and attempt to tackle environmental problems.
These internships would be ideal for an undergraduate student heading into their final year of study who is considering a research career and wants to gain experience and mentoring to support this.
In additional successful completion of an internship with SENSE will guarantee an interview for a PhD studentship with SENSE for 2022.
The internships:
Are six weeks in length to be completed during the summer vacation period (including four day paid leave).
Paid at UE03 (£345.38 per week).
Will be completed by remote working (i.e. intern can be located anywhere in the UK).
Will allow the intern to gain research experience and receive mentoring from the SENSE CDT team to support their future PhD applications.
Applications are welcome from students in any science discipline (including engineering, computing, mathematics, geosciences) however you cannot apply for an internship in the department you are currently studying in.
Please see below for details of the projects and application details. Informal enquires to sense.recruitment@ed.ac.uk
These are being widely advertised through Satellite Applications Catapult, Space Hub Yorkshire, Twitter and direct emails to undergraduate departments.
10 paid student placements in space-driven environmental science are available at @EdinburghUni and @UniversityLeeds this summer! 🛰️
Undergrad students in any science discipline can apply for the @NERCscience/@EoCdt positions. 🌍
A number of SENSE students are attending virtual EGU this year – we wish them the best of luck with their presentations, and hope they have many useful discussions!
Earlier this week SENSE held its first Industry Symposium. SENSE is really proud of its industry links, which give our students a network of industry professions as well as academics to aid their future careers, whether that be in academia, industry, the public sector, journalism and more.
Throughout the day the event had over 70 participants, with at least 40 participants from industry, including CASE partners, funders and government organisations.
Professor Ed Mitchard, SENSE co-director, introduced SENSE, which currently has 17 students with 15 more starting in October. These students cover broad topics – cryosphere, atmosphere, weather, space weather, vegetation, oceanography, ecology and crops – and use data from at least twenty types of Earth Observation satellites. Ed commented that all the SENSE students are using a common toolkit in terms of advanced data techniques, but the applications are very diverse. This is why SENSE is able to interact with such a wide range of industries.
SENSE is funded by NERC (Natural Environmental Research Council), which is matched by funding from University of Edinburgh and University of Leeds, and additionally from the UKSA (UK Space Agency). Beth Greenaway from UKSA laid out the UK’s vision to maximise the potential of Earth Observation by 2040. In order to maximise this potential, Beth noted that it’s essential to have people that understand the data and can use it to solve environmental problems – ‘if we’re going to have a thriving Earth Observation industry in the UK we need you to come and work in it!’. Andy Lloyd from NERC placed SENSE in the research council landscape, and explained that the call for SENSE’s funding arose because Earth Observation was identified a particular priority area that was not being addressed. Their skills gap survey showed that data is being underutilised and that the potential benefits were significant, with a barrier to this being the lack of trained people to use this data. Andy introduced CASE partnership, in which an industry can partner a particular project. This involves financial commitment (£1k per year), co-supervision and the student undertakes a 3-month internship during their 2nd year. ‘Through CASE partnerships we see mutual beneficial relationship. Putting in time and a small amount of funding, but also getting something back in terms of time and expertise from a really good student’.
In the next session, three students from SENSE’s first cohort presented their projects and their links to industry partners. Sam Bancroft commented that Unilever as a company is working on some similar topics to his project, and so there are lots of conversations that they can have and ideas that can move between them. Emily Dowd was looking forward to seeing how her collaboration with the MetOffice will pan out, and the benefits to both her PhD and the MetOffice in comparing models to understand which work better in different scenarios. Morag Fotheringham was looking forward to her placement with EarthWave, and thinking about which of their interesting projects she may be able to get involved with.
“After having worked in the UK Earth Observation sector prior to starting my project, I recognised the importance of an industry symposium. It was rewarding to engage with industry, share ideas, and be reminded of the usefulness of my work to those outside academia. As a result of today I hope to have opened lines of enquiry with partners in order to foster new collaborations and share data.”
– Sam Bancroft
Four of SENSE’s CASE partners gave introductions to their industry and how they work with SENSE. Murray Collins, who co-founded Space Intelligence, was looking forward to working with SENSE students and ‘getting brain power into the company, as well as shaping the brain power of the future’. Samantha Lavender who co-founded Pixalytics, spoke about her personal experience of choosing a PhD with a CASE partner because she felt it would benefit her future career, and that as an academic she saw the benefits of supervising students with CASE partners. For Sam, through CASE partnership Pixalytics can support the uptake and usage of Earth Observation data, and support the next generation while being involved in interesting science. Hina Khan from Spire, which has a fleet of over 125 nanosatellites built in Glasgow, reported how Spire is excited to work with SENSE because of its focus on Earth Observation and data anlyatics, which are two areas Spire at combining to enhance their capabilities. The MetOffice is the largest CASE partner of SENSE students and in Fiona O’Connor’s presentation she reported that the MetOffice are keen to be contributing to national capability, particularly fostering upcoming scientists and developing new expertise. Fiona is very pleased to have a CASE student starting in October this year, in a project with Ruth Doherty at Edinburgh.
Christine Gommenginger, who is the National Oceanography Centre representative on SENSE’s Management committee, presented in a keynote her experience as being a PI (principal investigator) on an Earth Explorer Mission. Becoming a satellite mission PI is the ultimate achievement in Earth Observation, and Christine wanted to pass a message to the current students ‘in the end we only regret we chances we didn’t take’. The process is long, competitive an uncertain, but with a good idea, a strong relationship between science and industry as well as passion, grit and luck, they could be mission PIs in the future.
At the roundtable discussion, Tom Doyle (NERC, digital environments senior programme manager), Dan Wicks (Head of Earth Observation at Satellite Applications Catapult), Kathie Bowden (UKSA lead on space skills and careers) and Ian Downey (ESA Space Solutions Business Applications UK Ambassador Platform) discussed space skills in the UK.
On the topic of the skills gap in the UK space sector, the UKSA Space Sector Skills Survey 2020: Research Report identifies the value of high-level training, because there will always be a need of people who have that extra level of knowledge and expertise, which Kathie feels is why SENSE’s connection between industry and academia is so powerful. Ian added the need for soft skills and rounded experience including entrepreneurship, project management and stakeholder relationship building, as well as technical excellence. On this note, Kathie shared her interest in ESA’s pilot scheme to bring in business students into programmes, to add different skills. Dan pointed out that the market is evolving rapidly and how essential it is to take the traditional knowledge of Earth Observation and put it in the context of the latest market status, to ensure the next generation of Earth Observation scientists are ready to play into this market – or even create the roles, Anna added. Tom shared that he thought SENSE has a role going forward to show the impact of these studentships to evidence the priority of similar training programmes in the future.
Discussing bridging the gap between academia and industry, Dan believes that it can be really difficult for a businesses to access expertise that sits in academia, and through formal collaboration with a programme such as SENSE students can be embedded within businesses to foster a more flexible, collaborative approach. Kathie feels that development of networks is key, and that SENSE’s networks and events like this industry symposium will become more and more important, and taking advantage of virtual events. Tom added that SENSE can have a key role in not only building but maintaining networks, which is a legacy that will continue. Ian often finds companies can have a 10 year old perspective on what space can offer, so he encourages collaborations with programmes like SENSE for aspiring companies to engage in this sector, as a low risk way to access the most current knowledge and expertise. Kathie discussed that industries often struggle to not only find skills they need, but also train their own people, which is a gap in which SENSE could potentially offer lectures or short courses, and Dan noted that in turn this could help drive research agendas.
To round up, Anna asked what are the opportunities for the fantastic community of students, academics and industry partners that SENSE have built up have, to play a leading role in the UK landscape. Ian shared that he was ‘thrilled to bits’ when SENSE was set up, with 50 new students coming through with the skill sets required to address national and global issues. Dan believes there is an increasing recognition within government of the role that space has to play in addressing many of its strategic interest, and Dan thinks that there are opportunities for SENSE to feed into this and drive the conversation. Kathie would like to see improved appreciation of the wide breadth of topics that ‘space’ covers – not just engineering and launching satellites – and instead of the ubiquitous nature of space data, and how it impacts daily life. Tom encouraged SENSE to make the most of space being really high on the political agenda, particularly on the environmental side.
For final advice for the students, Kathie urged them not to forget how transferable the skills that they are developing are, and to think about how they can use those skills in all sorts of different ways. Ian added that there is room for plenty more women in the space industry. Dan stressed to the students to not underestimate cross-disciplinary collaboration during a PhD, and to learn from others and take every opportunity to embed yourselves with those collaborations, whether it’s with industry partners or other sort of science disciplines, because that’s where that’s where the real sort of interesting kind innovations come from. Tom added they’re happy to link to other parts of UKRI.
Anna summarised that she felt it was fantastic to see what an important role SENSE and the SENSE students have in the development of national capability. It may be easy to forget when you’re a PhD researcher working on your own topic that you’re part of a bigger picture, and Anna is excited by the people involved in SENSE because they’re doing great things already, and can’t wait to see how they develop and how their careers pan out as we go forward.
It's not often listening to a conversation leaves you feeling inspired and empowered!
Thanks to all this mornings speakers and especially the round table participants! @EoCdt#SENSESymposium
After lunch, the students had a virtual poster session. This was held on the virtual platform ‘Remo’, where the students sat at ‘tables’ and shared their posters with anyone who came to sit at their table. For many this was their first opportunity to present their PhD, and many reported having useful and inspiring conversations.
Pleased to be sharing my work at the @EoCdt Industry Symposium today. It's been great hearing from some of the exciting CASE partners about the benefits of academia-industry collaboration in this field 🛰️🌍 And looking forward to working with @isardSAT over the next few yrs! https://t.co/s9fZdr2RaTpic.twitter.com/eK041XeKIV
Thanks to all who attended SENSE’s first industry symposium, we look forward to the next.
Are you an industry partner and would like to be involved with SENSE? Email Ruth Amey (eo_cdt@leeds.ac.uk) or Eleanor Graham (sense@ed.ac.uk) and we would be happy to discuss potential collabirations. As Ian Downey (ESA Space Solutions Business Applications UK Ambassador Platform) noted in the round table discussion, there are many companies from outside the traditional space domains, for example software systems and AI modelling, that are core to the space sector, and we would be really keen to engage with.
Our Industry Symposium will take place online on Tuesday 20th April. This will be an online event where we will showcase what is happening with the centre and the work our students are doing with their CASE industry partners.
The first cohort of NERC SENSE CDT students have finished 8 weeks of intensive training in Earth Observation and advanced data techniques, split into an Edinburgh block and a Leeds block. This training aims to give this next generation of Earth Observation experts an overview and the skills they need to succeed in their PhD, as well as create a bonded cohort of students.
The multi-disciplinary training included weeks on software carpentry, vegetation, machine learning and cryosphere and solid earth. In the future, students will have sessions on oceanography and fieldwork (postponed due to covid).
“The breadth of topics covered on the training allowed me to think outside of the world of glaciology for a while and consider some other approaches I could take forward in my project, such as machine learning. And despite everything running virtually, we were able to get to know each other better as a SENSE cohort. I think we will all be a valuable support network for each other over the next few years and hopefully could lead to some exciting scientific collaborations!”
– Bryony Freer, British Antarctic Survey and University of Leeds
Many hands make satellite work
A key part of this training is the group work aspect, allowing the students to network, share expertise and work together on ideas. The final piece of group work was to design a new Earth Observation mission, and present this to a panel. Here are the exciting new satellite missions that they have created!
INSPECT: the Insect, Pathogen and Environmental Change Tracking Satellite.
The main purpose of the mission is to monitor distribution and potential expansion of certain (sub-)tropical environments that are the preferred habitat of mosquitos – a known vector of many deadly diseases including malaria. The hyperspectral sensor (with thermal bands) onboard INSPECT will be able to map temperature, humidity, vegetation conditions and location of stagnant bodies of water. These observations will allow the distribution of the species to be modelled as a function of environmental conditions.
Comprehensive Atmospheric Radiation Records After Ten PM (CARRAT)
The proposed Earth Explorer mission Comprehensive Atmospheric Radiation Records After Ten PM (CARRAT) came about by asking ‘who knows what happens when the sun goes down?’. The aim of this satellite is to monitor the Earth’s atmospheric composition and pollution of cities at night by observing the atmospheric scattering of city lights. It will provide an insight into night time pollution and chemical species that contribute to global warming, as some chemical species go through photochemical and dark chemical cycles. In addition to monitoring the atmosphere, CARRAT has the potential to monitor urban development and observe lightning, bioluminescence, airglow and zodiacal light.
Have they (or)bit off more than they could chew?
WEL: Water Exploration Lidar
A mission to study land water sources as climate change and population growth continues to put stress on the worlds water cycle and increase water scarcity
Today we are running our first ever *virtual* JASMIN workshop! 🎉
As part of @EoCdt training, we have 25 attendees learning all about our unique data-intensive facility 💻🌍
They are taking part in hands-on task-based exercises to learn best practice for using JASMIN (1/2) pic.twitter.com/TAzUE5odrY
— Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (@cedanews) March 9, 2021
The machine learning week also featured an Alan Turing Institute – SENSE hackathon event. The goal of this challenge was to automatically identify sea, ice and land in satellite images of Danmarkshavn on the east coast of Greenland. Seven Alan Turing Institute PhD students joined the session, and using Sentinel-1 images the students worked in small teams to build and train a model to classify sea, ice and land in a dataset spanning a year, using data prepared for the ExtremeEarth project.
Today SENSE students are doing a @turinginst / SENSE #hackathon training algorithms to classify sea ice❄️
Our favourite application from a @turinginst student to join this event was 'data science is fun // satellite imagery is cool // learn new things // meet clever people' 🛰️😎
SENSE’s training programme is extremely important to the centre. Of the students who filled in the feedback from, 100% of students agreed or strongly agreed that SENSE’s training programme affected their decision to apply to or accept a PhD position at SENSE. The training was an opportunity to the students to learn a variety of new skills and to bond as group.
The training not only benefitted SENSE students, as we opened it to first-year students at Edinburgh, Leeds, NOC (National Oceanogrpahy Centre) and BAS (British Antarctic Survey). Nineteen PhD students joined the SENSE cohort for at least one week training from across these institutes.
The SENSE training has introduced me to a broad range of Earth observation tools and methods which have given me a good basis for the start of PhD and beyond. It was also a great opportunity to work with other PhDs during the group projects and allowed me to get to know the SENSE cohort which would have been difficult otherwise with the current restrictions.”
– Emily Dowd, University of Leeds
Where there’s a skill there’s a way
As well as learning technical details of Earth Observation and advanced data techniques, the training featured ‘soft skills’ sessions, to teach the students to be all-round academics and researchers. Tom Richardson from Nature Geoscience gave a presentation on ‘Publishing with Nature Geoscience’ with eighty-six attendees. Tom Lyons from STEM Centre and Andy Clarke presented on outreach and how the students can engage, which led to a number of students signing up to be STEM ambassadors. The students learnt valuable tips and tricks for working with the media in a session by Ian Rosser from the University of Leeds press office. Finally, Jurgen Neuberg gave the students some dos and don’ts for face to face and online presentations – which will be useful for the students in their first-year presentations and future conference contributions.
A SENSE of direction – looking to the future
In their second year, the SENSE students will do a 3-day Science Communication and Outreach course, run by Professor Mark Brandon and colleagues at the Open University. They will then do a 1-week Space Industry week, hosted by the Satellite Applications Catapult and European Space Agency (ESA) in Harwell. In their third year, the students will do a residential course in ESA’s ESRIN facility near Rome, Italy, as well as doing their 3-month industry placement. And finally in their final year the students will have career and CV coaching sessions, along with courses on Entrepreneurship and Intellectual Property.
As the students embark on their exciting new PhD projects, SENSE are thrilled to give the students this expert training, which will equip the students with skills, knowledge and confidence to thrive in their PhDs and future careers.
Last week was International Day of Women and Girls in Science (11th of February). The SENSE CDT students ran a hugely successful twitter takeover, you can read it in full below.
Hello! Emily, Bryony and Sophie here. We are some of the first cohort students on the SENSE CDT and today we are taking over the twitter feed to celebrate UN’s International Day of Women and Girls in Science. We will be highlighting past and present women scientists who work with or inspire the current SENSE students.
First up, SENSE Student Sam (@spiruel) has been inspired by American scientist and inventor Dr Valerie Thomas, who in the 1970s played an important role in the launch of the Landsat programme. She started in NASA’s Landsat team in 1970 and quickly became the expert on data storage.
Nowadays, the success and subsequent open-access of Landsat data is seen as a major point in the history of Earth Observation – where it could be said that ESA’s Copernicus programme wouldn’t be as successful as it is now without the previous achievements of Landsat.
Additionally, Dr. Thomas oversaw the first successful demonstration of applying space-based remote sensing to global crop monitoring and headed a team of the Large Area Crop Inventory Experiment (LACIE) to predict wheat yield worldwide.
Her work links directly with Sam’s PhD project, where he is developing a new methodology for assessing future food production based on machine learning, remote sensing and crop models.
Earth Observation achievements aside, Dr. Thomas is also responsible for inventing the ‘illusion transmitter’ in 1980 – a technology that enabled the creation of modern-day MRI medical imaging. What a trailblazer for women and girls in science!
Katherine Johnson studied Mathematics and French at West Virginia State College in the US. Her historical role as one of the first African-American women to work as a NASA scientist has been an inspiration to our resident SENSE mathematician Amber.
When asked to name her greatest contribution to space exploration, Johnson would talk about the calculations that helped sync Project Apollo’s Lunar Module with the lunar-orbiting Command and Service Module. She also worked on the Space Shuttle & early Landsat missions, and authored 26 research reports.
Katherine is depicted as a lead character in ‘Hidden Figures’, a 2016 film following the African-American female mathematicians who worked at NASA during the Space Race.
Decades after the pioneering work of Dr. Thomas and Katherine Johnson, SENSE are keen to promote the work of the @LadiesofLandsat community, established as a way to connect fellow scientists who are gender and minority peers, offering a platform to reach out and chat about anything from finding research partners to starting a family.
Now with over 5000 followers they are one of many growing online communities working to improve inclusivity in the geosciences.
Founders @morganahcrowley & @katefickas believe that “by building up each other’s confidence and celebrating our wins, we lift, retain and attract women in the field”. SENSE students love all the work you do ‘spreading badassery with STEMinism’
#WomenWednesday is just one of the great initiatives run by @SistersofSAR, an inclusive online community for women in SAR at all stages of life, inspired by @LadiesofLandsat. With many SENSE students using SAR data on the daily, we’re here for everything you do!
Taking it right back to the 1800s, the pioneering paleontologist and fossil collector Mary Anning has been an inspiration for SENSE student Megan Udy and we’re sure many other Women in STEM.
Growing up on the Jurassic Coast, Mary’s father was an amateur fossil collector and taught her how to look for and clean fossils. This sparked her passion, and despite not having any formal education, she taught herself geology and anatomy.
The fact that Mary was a woman of poor background with no education led to the community being reluctant to recognise her work. Male scientists would often buy the fossils she found, which she had to sell to support her family, and pass them off as their own work.
The Geological Society of London refused to admit Mary, and continued to refuse to admit any women until 1904. She died at the age of 47, still in financial difficulty, with little recognition and not knowing the impact her finds had/will have on geology and palaeontology.
More recently a campaign (@MaryAnningRocks) was set up to create a permanent memorial in Anning’s hometown of Lyme Regis, with a statue set to be put up as a reminder of Mary’s discoveries in the region and her contribution to science.
Centuries after her death, Mary continues to inspire young girls to take an interest in science, as we will see with our next inspirational girl in STEM.
Born over three centuries after her hero Mary Anning, 11-year old Evie Swire started the campaign @MaryAnningRocks to raise money for the erection of a statue in Lyme Regis recognising the remarkable work of Mary Anning.
The campaign believes that a visual celebration of Mary Anning’s incredible contributions to science is the perfect way to address the gender imbalance in STEM, to create an example, especially for our young women to follow.
They hope that this statue will set in motion a wider debate, a discussion for all the forgotten women of history and their marginalised and forgotten contributions to the world we now all live in.
Evie is a fantastic role model for Girls in Science and has said that when she grows up she wants to go into outer space. We wonder if Evie has heard of Earth Observation? Maybe she could be a future SENSE student?!
SENSE student Eszter is proud of the Hungarian-born scientist Katalin Karikó. She developed the patent on which the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine is based.
In 1985, she and her family emigrated to the US, hiding the money from the sale of their car in her daughter’s teddy bear. She reckons she would have been a mediocre scientist if she stayed in Hungary. Instead, she has persisted in her field and now a Nobel Prize isn’t off the table!
SENSE Student Nick Homer is inspired by Prof. Sarah Gilbert. She co-developed the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine with the Oxford Vaccine Group. This vaccine was developed in record time and is now one of the main vaccines being used against the disease around the world.
It is hoped that the vaccine will be valuable in reaching less developed parts of the world because, unlike the other vaccines, it can be stored at regular fridge temperature and is therefore much cheaper per dose. What an amazing, world-changing achievement!
Dr. Catherine Nakalembe is an Assistant Research Professor at the University of Maryland, USA and @NASAharvest Africa Lead. Her research uses remote sensing and machine learning to aid agriculture, foodsecurity and climate change.
She is a 2020 African Food Prize Laureate for improving the lives of farmers by harnessing satellitedata to guide agricultural decision-making. Her work aims to predict either drought or rainfall estimates, helping farmers plan and prepare.
Dr. Nakalembe grew up in Kampala, Uganda, never expecting to become an environmental scientist. The PhD programme as University of Maryland enabled her to learn about remote sensing while working in Uganda and around her home continent.
Dr. Nakalembe now mentors young black women to encourage them into environmental science. “In the diaspora, I go to meetings and I am the only one who looks like this. It feels lonely when it is a new country or space.”
Her work in utilising satellite data for land management is linked to a PhD project by SENSE’s Lucy Wells, who will research the response of savannas and dry forests to global change! Dr. Nakalembe is a great role model for women and girls worldwide
Dr. Chelle Gentemann (@ChelleGentemann) is currently a senior scientist at Farallon Institute advocating open science and inclusivity. Dr. Joellen Russell (@DeepBlueSeaNext) is a Professor at University of Arizona researching the ocean’s role in climate!
Both are PIs on upcoming NASA Earth mission proposals, if either are selected, they will be the first female in history to lead a NASA Earth Science Mission! What better role models than these two amazing oceanographers! Good luck from the students at SENSE!
Kimberley Bryant (@6Gems) is an electrical engineer and computer scientist from the US. She started a non-profit called @BlackGirlsCode in 2011, with the aim to introduce girls from underrepresented communities to computer programming.
The organisation has the goal to educate 1,000,000 black girls in programming by 2040. While not directly related to Earth Sciences, SENSE student Jacob Connolly thinks computer programming is vital for all our PhD projects in SENSE.
@BlackGirlsCode is a really important organisation for the next generations of scientists!
Conversations like this with @AlisonJ_Cook helped SENSE student Bryony Freer to see the possibility of a future career in Antarctic science, and is why she wants to highlight the amazing work of female lecturers and PhD students who continue to inspire the next generation of women in STEM.
And the incredible women of the #PCAS course at @GatewayAntarct1, including Daniela Liggett, @drmichellelarue, @UrsulaRack and Gemma Brett, who’ve helped prove there’s no limits to women working in Antarctic science.
Women now account for >50% of all STEM postgrads at UK universities, yet science faculties are still often very male-dominated at the senior level. So to all those female role-models out there working for gender equality in STEM, we appreciate everything you do!
Dr. Judith Wolf (@JudithWolfNOC) is a physical oceanographer based at National Oceanography Centre, Liverpool, and a visiting professor at the Univesity of Liverpool. Her extensive career has involved developing and validating models to aid coastal impacts of climate change and tidal energy and is currently the supervisor to SENSE student Sophie Durston.
At the start of her career in 1976, all Dr. Wolf’s colleagues were men. Over time, she witnessed the gradual improvement to the present day where more than half the scientific staff are at National Oceanography Centre in Liverpool are women! For the first time, the NOC’s director of science is a woman: Prof Angela Hatton!
Recently, Dr. Wolf has been working on two projects, one based in the Caribbean and one in China, focussing on coastal climate change resilience and management in collaboration with local stakeholders!
“Having strong and empowering role models, like Judith, in a once male dominated field allowed me to believe that I could succeed with my PhD. I feel honoured to have Judith as a supervisor to inspire and guide me!” – Sophie Durston
Ruth is a co-supervisor for @emily_dowd_ on the SENSE CDT. She completed a PhD in Astrophysics but her focus shifted to the environment and went on to do an MSc in Environmental Science with a strong focus on climate change.
She specialises in atmospheric composition and air quality. She strives to carry out useful research so her focus is also on the health impact of air pollution. This work is very important when air pollution is responsible for 7.7% of world mortality.
In Ruth’s spare time she helps pupils at her local high school prepare for university interviews, inspiring the next generation of scientists.
Alice Marzocchi (@allygully), SENSE Student Phoebe’s supervisor, is currently in the Southern Ocean studying the impacts of the A68a iceberg. Make sure to look at some of her amazing photos! Her research, at National Oceanography Centre, has a focus on understanding understand climate dynamics.
Dr. Isla Myers-Smith (@IslaHMS) is a researcher and lecturer in Global Change Ecology at the University of Edinburgh. Through fieldwork, data science, big picture thinking and scientific collaboration, Isla’s work helps us understand the impact of climate change on Arctic tundra ecosystems.
Founded by Isla, @TeamShrub is a dynamic research group conducting a range of exciting Arctic science, using everything from teabags to drones! Many Team Shrub members are early career researchers, developing their scientific careers with Isla’s mentorship and encouragement.
Science communication is a key focus of Isla’s, as she works with organisations such as National Geographic and Wired UK to share her findings with society. Seeking novel and engaging methods of communication, she encourages conversation around climate change in the Arctic.
Listed in this year’s WIRED25, Isla contributes substantially to Arctic tundra research. Her science communication inspires and engages wide audiences with her work, while her mentorship enables next generation researchers. She is supervisor to Calum Hoad on the SENSE CDT.
SENSE Manager, @ruthamey, would like to highlight two brilliant women in science. Dr Laura Gregory (@theearthquakes) has endless enthusiasm and interest in anything earthquake and fault related, and is a friend and mentor to many aspiring scientists.
Ruth would also like to highlight Dr Sam Giles (@GilesPalaeoLab) for devoting significant time and effort into challenging the scientific community, to make science a better, fairer, more equal place (and for tweeting cool pictures of fossils).
The National Oceanography Centre manager for SENSE is Dr. Christine Gommenginger, a physical oceanographer who specialises in new and improved observations of the ocean from space!
In recognition of Dr. Gommenginger’s achievement in her field, remote sensing, she was awarded the title of Honorary Professorial Fellow from the University of Southampton!
Dr. Gommenginger’s impressive career features extensive multi-disciplinary collaborations across academia, industry, and government. Who better to help manage the SENSE CDT?
Helen Fricker is a professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the director of Scripps Polar Center, San Diego. A prominent glaciologist, she has authored over 100 publications in the field of remote sensing of Antarctic ice shelves and active subglacial lakes.
Growing up in the UK, Helen attended @AGGSchool where her physics teacher Melissa Lord encouraged her onto a path to become a scientist. Mrs Lord must have been quite the inspirational figure, with the oceanographer @helenczerski also a talented kind graduate of her classroom!
In more recent years, Helen has played a central role in developing @NASA_Ice‘s ICESat and ICESat-2 laser altimetry missions, and we’re sure she will be an invaluable source of advice for SENSE student Bryony Freer who Helen is co-supervising on her ICESat-2 PhD with British Antarctic Survey.
At the end of 2020 @helenafricker received the ultimate honour a glaciologist could wish for, when an ice piedmont in Antarctica was named after her by @AntarcticNames. This marks decades of her pioneering satellite altimetry work on the continent! Congrats from all the SENSE family!
Our wonderful SENSE Co-Director Dr. Anna Hogg is an expert in Earth Observation and Associate Professor at the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds, where she uses satellite data to monitor remote ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.
Dr. Hogg’s impressive career so far has included involvement in 17 international research projects funded by ESA (European Space Agency), NERC (National Environmental Research Council), UKSA (UK Space Agency) and NASA as well as participating in five major field campaigns in Antarctica and Greenland.
Without Anna’s enthusiasm for science and training the next generation of #EarthObservation experts, SENSE CDT may well not have even existed – so us students have a lot to be grateful for!!
To round up our takeover we wanted to highlight the current SENSE cohort! Currently 60% are women who are able to support and inspire each other across a wide range of topics but with one goal: to become experts in Earth Observation!
Join us on Thu 25th and Fri 26th of February for a mini-hackathon challenge, organised by the Alan Turing Institute and the SENSE Earth Observation CDT. The goal of this challenge is to automatically identify sea, ice and land in satellite images of Danmarkshavn on the east coast of Greenland. Using Sentinel-1 images you will work in a small team with SENSE PhD students to build and train a model to classify sea, ice and land in a dataset spanning a year, using data prepared for the ExtremeEarth project.
There are a limited number of places for Turing PhD students. Some familiarity with python or a similar language and knowledge of machine learning is required. Apply to join here, deadline Fri 12th February: https://forms.gle/fkjXG5E3DtduQDu69
