Meet our Planetary Computing Fellows

Meet our new Planetary Computing Fellows Dr Michael Dales and Dr Sadiq Jaffer, who are working on harnessing the power of computer science to tackle the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss. Both their roles have been made possible through philanthropic support.

Planetary computing work has been developing for quite some time here. It was 2008 when our then Head of Department Professor Sir Andy Hopper and his colleague Andrew Rice published their seminal work Computing for the Future of the Planet, which suggested using remote sensing to measure the effects of human activity on the environment.

Fast forward to today and the Energy and Environment Group (EEG) here, led by Professor Srinivasan Keshav and Professor Anil Madhavapeddy, has a range of environmental research initiatives for computer scientists to work with ecologists and plant scientists.

One such project involves using tools such as remote sensing and AI to accurately assess projects addressing deforestation and to verify that money from carbon credits can confidently be invested in them. This is essential, the researchers say, because forests have a crucial role in protecting biodiversity and sequestering carbon.

As Professor of Planetary Computing Anil Madhavapeddy puts it, "The impact of human activity on the planet is shocking: we’re losing tropical rainforest at such a rate it could be gone in our lifetimes, destroying two-thirds of the world's terrestrial biodiversity. We view computer science as an accelerative process for tackling this crisis, and a way to help ecologists refine their questions and get to their solutions faster."

Now, we have two more committed proponents of this work in our new Planetary Computing Fellows Dr Michael Dales and Dr Sadiq Jaffer. In both cases, their fellowships have been made possible thanks to philanthropy.

Bringing computer science and conservation science together
Bringing computer science to ecology is vital. In the last 15 years there has been an explosion in the amount of environmental data available to researchers, thanks to space-borne sensors such as those employed by NASA to measure changes in the earth’s atmosphere, biomass and ocean life.

But ecologists have been struggling to upgrade their digital skills fast enough to be able to manage and analyse the vast datasets — petabytes in size — that have resulted. This is where Michael and Sadiq are helping, contributing their skills in building systems that can accelerate the process, with benefits for both planet and people. 

And the fact that Michael's and Sadiq's careers span industry as well as academia is highly valuable. Their experiences of creating durable systems, shipping successful products and holding leadership roles enhances their ability to apply the findings of the research they are doing now.

Michael started in this Department before moving on to work at Intel Research. His next roles were with a tech NGO helping improve access to technology for places where a-computer-per-person doesn't scale, and then building products for security startup Bromium (which was co-founded by Department faculty and alumni).

Analysing vast ecological datasets
Now, he's back in the Department and working with ecologists at the University's Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI). "I assist them in analysing these vast ecological datasets quickly to power their research," he explains. "But I also help build them into larger systems that need to run for the lifetime of forests projects. As these can be 20-30 years, they need industrial longevity built into them." He's also guiding PhD students in this Department, helping to encourage a pipeline of future talent.

For Sadiq, too, this Fellowship brings him back to Cambridge where he was previously involved with the development here of the fast and secure programming language OCaml. Following a PhD at the University of Warwick in mobile autonomous robotics, he went to work for a series of startups. He led engineering and machine learning terms at several mobile advertising businesses, and then started and sold his own business before coming here.

"It's a big shift, going from the private sector's revenue-driven atmosphere to academia's longer-view focus on research and innovation," he says. He wouldn’t have it any different, though. "This world-leading Department, and the incredible work happening in the CCI, add up to a rare and wonderful place to work."

Sadiq's first major project here was leading technology development at the Cambridge Centre for Carbon Credits. This interdisciplinary collaboration was founded following a philanthropic donation from the Tezos Foundation and links this Department with those of Plant Science and Zoology. The Centre works both to support foundational research in the relevant areas of computer science, environmental science, and economics and to create a trusted decentralised marketplace where purchasers of carbon credits can confidently and directly fund trusted nature-based projects."

Research into tropical forest protection
At 4C, Sadiq explains, "As well as doing research into tropical forest protection, we were connecting it very quickly to policy and building systems so that people can — and will continue to — use the research. These Fellowships allow us to continue that work: doing good research that can also have impact in the real world." 

The Planetary Computing Fellowships have been made possible thanks to funding from Cambridge alumnus John Bernstein, Cambridge spinout Tarides, and members of the trading firm Jane Street, driven by the donors' vision around ecological solutions and integrity in digital marketplaces via econometric work. They demonstrate the power of philanthropy and how it can be a gamechanger in terms of creativity, invention, and faster, bolder innovations.

It's just what Tarides founder and CEO Thomas Gazagnaire had in mind: "I founded Tarides to address complex computing problems and positively impact real-world ecosystems," he says. "Our open-source contributions to OCaml are widely used in industrial applications that need the highest level of assurance and safety. Sponsoring the crucial work of planetary computing is a natural next step for us to bring these benefits to conservation science."

Leveraging technologies to address climate change
He continues: "Collaboration between research and industry can leverage open-source technologies to urgently address climate change and biodiversity loss on a global scale. Tarides has been developing the next-generation SpaceOS platform to bring the benefits of cloud computing to satellite platforms, and we are excited by the productive exchange of research and code with the Centre for Earth Observation at the Cambridge Conservation Initiative."

Philanthropic funding also enables the freedom and flexibility to work across disciplines: the Fellows work with CCI ecologists, even though the latter's publicly funded grants don't cover this collaboration. Equally, Sadiq and Michael can choose high-impact interdisciplinary projects that don't fit the conventional funding mould.

Ultimately, it's about genuinely meaningful work that touches lives far beyond Cambridge. As Michael puts it, "Why am I here doing this when I could be earning more at a startup? Because it's a unique chance to use my skills to make a change for good, and the need for us to do so is very pressing."

• Adapted from an article that first appeared on the Support Cambridge website.