Professor Paul Bates elected as Fellow of the Royal Society

Awards and prizes 06.05.2021
Intro

Fathom would like to congratulate Professor Paul Bates who has been elected as a Fellow of the world’s most eminent scientific academy, the Royal Society, for his exceptional contributions to science.

Since commencing his PhD at the University of Bristol in 1989 Paul’s primary research focus has been on improving the prediction of flood inundation from city to global scales. In this time, he has produced a breadth of research that has transformed the way that we view flood. To date this includes co-authoring five edited books, 229 peer-reviewed journal articles, 29 refereed book chapters, all of which has obtained over 27,000 citations.

Throughout his career he has undertaken numerous roles including working as the Director of the Cabot Institute, Head of the School of Geographical Sciences at Bristol and has spent sabbatical periods at Laboratoire National d’Hydraulique et Environnement in Paris, the EU Joint Research Centre, Princeton University and the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab at CALTECH.

Professor Paul Bates’ Influence on Fathom

For Fathom, Paul Bates played a crucial role in not only training our co-founders Andrew SmithChristopher Sampson, during their PhDs, and Jeff Neal, during his PostDoc, but also supporting their vision and guiding the organisation as it has grown. Speaking on Paul’s fellowship, they tell us:

“Paul’s achievements over the past few decades speak for themselves, and without these extraordinary contributions Fathom simply would not have come into being.  On a personal level, Paul’s steadfast presence firstly as a PhD supervisor, then as a business partner, and ultimately as a friend, has helped to shape the past decade of our lives. It is a true pleasure to continue working together with Paul, and we are so pleased that this remarkable accolade has been bestowed on him. Congratulations Paul!”

With his research being utilised by researchers, NGOs, multinational companies and insurers to manage flood hazard and risk world wide, we take a look at some of his key achievements throughout his academic and professional career so far.

Prof Paul Bates journey to the Royal Society

Mentorship of Leading Figures

Throughout his career, Paul Bates has not only dedicated his time to transforming the academic world’s understanding of flood but educating others to do the same. Mentorship throughout his career has produced leading figures within global flood risk, including:

Kate Marks, Deputy Director of Digital Services, Incident Management & Resilience;

Hannah Cloke OBE, Professor of Hydrology, University of Reading, UK;

Thorsten Stoesser, Professor of Computational Engineering, Cardiff University, UK;

Matthew Horritt, Independent Consultant, UK;

Richard Dawson, Professor of Earth Systems Engineering & EPSRC Research Fellow, Lloyd’s of London Science of Risk Prize winner 2012;

Giuliano Di Baldassarre, Professor, Uppsala University, Sweden, AGU Early Career Award and EGU Outstanding Young Scientist Award winner;

Guy Schumann, Research Scientist, UCLA and RSS Hydro Ltd;

Dai Yamazaki, Associate Professor, University of Tokyo, MEXT Young Scientist of the Year, 2019.

Looking to the future, Paul has a lot of exciting opportunities and projects on the horizon within his roles as academic scientist, Professor of Hydrology at the University of Bristol and co-founder of Fathom. We look forward to seeing where his career takes him next

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