Invited Speakers

Helen is a hydrological modeller specialising in model development; her research interests include integrated water resource modelling and the representation of anthropogenic influences in hydrological models. She is a member of the Water Resources Systems Group at UKCEH, and has worked with a range of models on projects in the UK, India, and South America, in water resources and water quality modelling.

A new radiation sensor technology and the potential for using them in environmental monitoring
Alan Drew, Professor of Experimental Physics at Queen Mary University of London 

Professor Alan Drew FRSA is a Professor of Experimental Physics at Queen Mary University of London. He has been awarded a number of prestigious fellowships and awards over his career, starting with a Fellowship of the Royal Commission of the Exhibition of 1851 (2004), Leverhulme Fellow (2008), European Research Council (ERC) Fellow (2012), Talent 1000 Scholar of the Chinese Ministry of Education (2014), Changjiang Distinguished Professor at Sichuan University (2015) and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (2023). He is an Indonesian government advisor on sustainable energy and was previously an advisor to the Japanese Atomic Energy Agency and International Atomic Energy Agency (United Nations). His historical research interests include using spin sensitive and structural probes situated at central facilities to characterise and understand the fundamental properties of materials, with applications in areas such as spin and charge carrier dynamics in organic and biological materials, energy materials, spintronics, biomass nanostructured carbons and radiation detection.

Dust on the London Underground
Justie Mak, Aerosol Science Team, Imperial College London

Justie Mak is a postdoctoral Research Associate at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London. She is an epidemiologist whose research spans a range of health outcomes, with a focus on respiratory diseases, especially in low- and middle-income countries. She completed her PhD at Imperial College’s School of Public Health in 2025, where she investigated at the risk of occupational exposure to subway particulate matter on cardiorespiratory health in London Underground workers.

Gerald Mills is a physical geographer based at UCD who works on the climate of cities. I publish in the areas of urban climates, climate change and urban greening. I am co-author of Urban Climates (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and of The Urban Heat Island: A guidebook (Elsevier, 2021). I was elected president of the International Association for Urban Climates (IAUC) in 2010 and organised the International Conference on Urban Climates in Dublin (ICUC8) in 2012. I have served as Secretary and as President of the Geographical Society of Ireland and President of the Irish Meteorological Society. I work with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on Integrated Urban Services initiative which seeks to co-ordinate hydrological and meteorological services at an urban scale. I am the recipient of the IAUC’s 2021 Luke Howard Award; this award is presented annually to an individual based on lifetime contributions to the development of urban climate science.