Team

The project is led by Professor Nigel Gilbert (University of Surrey) with Co-Investigators Dr Ian Hamilton (UCL), Dr Suzanne Bartington (University of Birmingham) and Dr Sarah Moller (National Centre for Atmospheric Science, University of York).

Professor Nigel Gilbert | Principal Investigator

Professor Nigel Gilbert holds a Distinguished Chair in Computational Social Science at the University of Surrey.  Nigel was one of the first to use agent-based models in the social sciences, in the early 1990s, and has since published widely on the methodology underlying computer modelling, and on the application of simulation for applied problems such as understanding commercial innovation, managing environmental resources such as energy and water, forecasting price movements in the English housing market, and supporting public policy decision-making. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours of 2016 for services to engineering and the social sciences. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the British Computer Society, and the Academy of the Social Sciences, and is a Chartered Engineer. He is a member of the ESRC Council and has chaired and been a member of numerous committees for the UK Research Councils. Nigel is also the Director of the ESRC funded Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus (CECAN), which develops and tests methods for the evaluation of complex public policies. 

Dr Suzanne Bartington | Co-Investigator

Suzanne is a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health and Clinical Research Fellow at the Institute of Applied Health Research, University of Birmingham, with interests in environmental epidemiology and applied public health. Her research primarily investigates the health, social and economic impact of air pollutant exposure and evaluation of policy intervention measures to inform public health policy worldwide. She is health theme lead for the £4.9M NERC funded West Midlands Air Quality Improvement Programme (WM-Air), a 5-year translational research programme applying environmental science to deliver regional impact in public health, economic and societal terms.

Dr Ian Hamilton | Co-Investigator

Ian is an Associate Professor at the UCL Energy Institute, University College London, UK. Ian’s research is focused on the nexus between energy supply-demand in buildings, indoor and urban environmental conditions, and health and climate change. Ian is the Principle Investigator for the IEA’s ‘Annex 70 – Building Energy Epidemiology‘ on energy and building stock data and modelling drawing together researchers from 25 institutions from across 12 countries. Ian is a Co-investigator on the UK’s ‘Centre on Research for Energy Demand Solutions’, the UK-China Programme for Total Building Performance and the UK’s Health Protection Research Unit on ‘Healthy and Sustainable Cities under Climate Change’. Ian has worked with the UK Government to undertake energy policy evaluation for the residential sector, including CERT/CESP, ECO and Warm Homes Discount. Ian also led the development of the National Household Model Health Module which is a health impact assessment tool for housing and energy policy.

Dr Sarah Moller | Co-Investigator

Sarah is an independent research fellow (Assistant Professor) at the Wolfson Atmospheric Chemistry Laboratories, in the Department of Chemistry, University of York. She is also the National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) Air Pollution Theme Leader. 

Sarah’s research interests lie across air quality science and policy. Through a role jointly funded by a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Knowledge Exchange Fellowship and the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), Sarah is working to increase the impact of NERC air quality science in supporting Government strategies, through liaison between the atmospheric science research community, NERC, and Defra. She identifies opportunities for and enables engagement in the co-design and delivery of research and advises on strategic evidence needs across air quality science and policy. Sarah is one of six senior research fellows seconded to Defra on their strategic Systems Programme, looking to pilot transdisciplinary systems approaches to inform policy design, delivery and evaluation, and to embed them into Defra’s ways of working.  Sarah also researches novel applications of data analysis and interpretation techniques to extract more information from air quality monitoring data. She sits on the Defra Air Quality Expert Group working with the Defra Air Quality teams to develop the group’s work programme and ways of working, and to ensure that advice from this group is communicated effectively to policy teams, Ministers, and the Defra Chief Scientific Adviser so it can be used appropriately to inform air quality policy. Sarah also sits on the Natural Hazards Partnership Steering Group on behalf of NCAS.

Dr Alex Penn | Senior Research Fellow

Alex develops participatory complexity science methodologies to help stakeholders and decision makers to understand and “steer” their complex human systems. She is a principal member of CECAN, the “Centre for Evaluating Complexity across the Nexus” at the University of Surrey, where she works to generate and apply novel, cutting-edge methods for evaluating policy for complex systems. She has developed and used participatory systems mapping in numerous government and non-government case studies and consultancy projects, including for Defra, BEIS, DfT and Facebook. She specialises in making complexity actionable in context, adapting methods to generating new, usable insights that meet stakeholders’ needs on the ground. She also has strong interests in new management philosophies for interacting with complex living systems and was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts for her work in novel application of whole-systems design to bacterial communities. Alex has an academic background in physics, evolutionary ecology and artificial life as well as whole systems design.

@DrAlexPenn /   Alex on LinkedIn 

Kirstie Hatcher | Project Manager

Kirstie manages the ANTICIPATE project, as well as CECAN Limited, the commercial arm of the CECAN project.  She has worked at the University of Surrey for a decade project managing a range of research grants and internal networks to support academic research.  Prior to Surrey she has produced e-learning, worked for the automotive industry and within corporate communications. Kirstie is a PRINCE2 qualified Practitioner with an MA in Fine Art (Brighton).