Team

Richard is a Professor of Urban Planning and GISC at The University of Manchester and previously worked in planning practice before joining academia.

He aims to enhance stakeholder involvement and participation in spatial decision making.

Richard’s research brings together: Public Participation GIS, Spatial Analysis and Data Science, and Smart Cities. 

Dave is a Professor of the Digital Environment within the department of Earth and Environmental Science, working for many years in modelling the evolution of atmosphere. 

An atmospheric scientist by trade, David has also spent many years working at the on smart city-environment-IoT projects and now spends most of his time working at the AI-environment interface.  

Dave is the Deputy director of the Digital Solutions Hub.

You can read a recent article he did about AI and the DSH here. 

Caroline was named as one of the Guardian’s Top 50 Women in Engineering 2022. Her research investigates the relationship between humans and technology across a wide range of areas, including health and the environment, creative media and software engineering.

She is Research Director of the Software Sustainability Institute and a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute.

A Professor of Computer Science, Caroline is also a qualified psychologist and is a co-director of the DSH.

John is a professor of Health Informatics at The University of Manchester and previously worked in the telecommunications industry before joining academia.

John works at the intersection of information technology and healthcare research focusing on applying information technology to improving health care and includes:

• Harnessing computing technology to enhance data science 
• Using information technology to improve health services
• Applying emerging computing technologies to create novel interventions

John is a co-investigator on the Digital Solutions Hub, focussed on the healthcare use case.

More information to follow

Hugh is Professor of Atmospheric Composition at The University of Manchester, Director of the Manchester Environmental Research Institute, Manchester site lead for the NERC National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) and visiting Professor at Fudan University. 

His research interests focus on quantifying processes responsible for air pollution and effects on regional climate.  He has led and participated in numerous large international field studies to study amongst others biomass burning, trans-boundary air pollution, dust in the atmosphere, and the impacts of pollution on the clean background atmosphere.  He has led a number of studies to investigate pollution in the UK, China and India and was the PI of a major international collaboration between India and the UK to characterise air pollution across the Indo-Gangetic Plain using international research aircraft.  He has led and participated in a number of major UK air quality programmes and currently leads the UKRI CleanAir project OSCA. He is the 2022 recipient of the European Geophysical Union Vilhelm Bjerknes Medal.

Hugh is a member of the DSH Academic Leadership Team.  He brings his expertise with large NERC Observational platforms and data sets to the DSH.

James Evans is a Professor in Geography and Director of the Manchester Urban Institute. His research focuses on how cities learn to become smarter and more sustainable. He is also co-founder of Urban 360, a University spin-out that provides integrated environmental monitoring solutions.

Currently James is researching how urban innovation drives sustainability, building on past work looking at urban living labs, smart cities, and governance. He has worked with more than 200 organisations across the UK, Europe, Africa and Asia.

James’ role in the DSH is to ensure urban partners are connected into the process and support the development of relevant use cases. This role builds on his experience leading large smart city projects, which involved working with large consortia of public and private organisations to develop, implement and evaluate solutions.

Maria Sharmina is Professor in Energy and Sustainability at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in the School of Engineering, and her background is economics and statistics.  

Her research focuses on sustainable business models for low-carbon energy and circular economy. Maria also has a keen interest in translating research into policy, and she served as Senior Academic Advisor with the Government Office for Science and Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS), working on the Net Zero Foresight project in 2021-2023.  

 Within DSH, she is working on business models for innovative digital services. 

Sarah is a Professor of Geography who has worked for more than 30 years on the application of Geographical Information Science to urban and environmental challenges.

Her most recent research considers the spatial dimensions of environmental processes related to urban green infrastructure; climate risks and adaptation; and human health and wellbeing. She led the development of the Climate Just resources, which aim to support more socially aware responses to climate-related challenges across the UK.

A hallmark of her research is close collaboration with research users and a commitment to beneficial environmental and social outcomes. 

Sarah is co-investigator on the Digital Solutions Hub, focussed on the Climate Just use case.