Keynote Speakers
Jacqueline McGlade
Jacqueline McGlade is currently Chief Scientist and Director of UNEP’s Division of Early Warning and Assessment. Prior to joining UNEP as Special Advisor to the Executive Director on knowledge management and science, Jacquie was Executive Director of the European Environment Agency from 2003-2013. Before this, she was Professor in Environmental Informatics in the Department of Mathematics at University College London, Director of the Centre for Coastal and Marine Sciences of the UK Natural Environment Research Council, Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Warwick, Director of Theoretical Ecology at the FZ Jülich and Senior Scientist at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in the Federal Government of Canada. Her activities continue to be focused on participatory knowledge systems and citizen science, the dynamics of ecosystems and planetary systems, sustainable development and the governance of natural resources, environmental informatics with particular reference to socio-economic transitions, technological innovation and policy analysis. She has over 200 peer-reviewed papers, articles, books and legal submissions to the International Court of Justice and has produced and presented award winning feature films, TV and radio series. As founder of her own software company, she has developed many software systems and applications particularly in the area of fuzzy logic and decision-making under high uncertainty. She has been elected as a fellow of two learned societies (FLS and FRSA) and has received international prizes and honours from Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Monaco, Romania, Sweden, UK, the USA including the Zayed prize as a team member of the Millennium Assessment and Global Citizen 2013 for her work on environmental informatics and citizen science.
Jer Thorp
Jer Thorp is an artist and educator from Vancouver, Canada, currently living in New York. Coming from a background in genetics, his digital art practice explores the many-folded boundaries between science, data, art, and culture. Recently, his work has been featured by The Guardian, Scientific American, The New Yorker, and Popular Science.Thorp’s award-winning software-based work has been exhibited in Europe, Asia, North America, South America, including in the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. Jer is an adjunct Professor in New York University’s ITP program, and a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Design Innovation. He is a co-founder of The Office For Creative Research, a multi-disciplinary research group exploring new modes of engagement with data. From 2010 – 2012, Jer was the Data Artist in Residence at the New York Times. He is National Geographic Emerging Explorer and in 2015 was named one of Canadian Geographic’s 100 Greatest Explorers.
David Wallom
David is Associate Professor and Associate Director Innovation of the Oxford e-Research Centre, where he leads two seperate research groups Energy and Environmental ICT & Advanced e-infrastrucuture & Cloud Computing. He has led over 35 research projects in areas such as Cloud utilisation, Smart Energy Grids, Research data management, Green IT, ICT security and institutional repositories. He is a member of the GCHQ recognized centre of Excellence in Cyber Security and the UK Space Agency Ground segment Advisory Group. He is the academic representative on the board of the HEFCE Institute for Environmental Analytics and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Norweigan Information for Action e-Science Centre and a member of the SAB for the NEGI Tools for Investigating Climate Change at High Northern Latitudes (eSTICC) & Ensemble-based Methods for Environmental Monitoring and Prediction (EmblA) centres. He is also Co-Editor in Chief of the Elsevier journal SoftwareX.
Cristina Capineri
Cristina is associate professor at the University of Siena where she teaches human and development geography since 2000. Since 1990 she has been a member of the NECTAR Group (Network for European Communications and Transport Activities Research)
one of the activities of the European Science Foundation and since 1998 she has been appointed scientific secretary of the Società di Studi Geografici (Geographical Studies Society) in Florence. She is coordinating LADEST laboratory mainly devoted to GIS and volunteered
geographic information. In 2012 she has been appointed Chair of the Cost Action ENERGIC: Software and methodologies for harnessing geographic information from the crowd. Her research interests concern broadly transport networks issues and logistics, Giscience and volunteered geographic information, citizen science, local development and sustainability, environmental indicators,organic agriculture.
