IOP Chief Executive at the ASE Annual Conference

IOP: John Lewis Lecture

Challenges in predicting the weather and climate: science, young people and public policy

ASE Annual Conference 2013

Thursday

Time: 1130-1230

Paul Hardaker is currently chief executive of the Institute of Physics. He is also chairman of Sense about Science, a charity that campaigns for better reporting of science in the media, and a visiting professor in the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Reading.

Paul is a mathematician by background whose early research work focused on modelling and instrument studies in radio propagation, working with organisations such as British Telecom, ESA and RAL. He later moved to the Met Office where he spent 14 years in a variety of roles including heading up an international consultancy on hydrometeorology, and the Remote Sensing and Observations Branches. He then became Programme Director for the Met Office's Development Programmes and latterly the Met Office’s Chief Advisor to Government, providing support to the Government in areas such as climate change policy and the civil contingency programme.

Following his time at the Met Office, and before taking over at the Institute of Physics, Paul was the Chief Executive of the Royal Meteorological Society. Whilst in that role he was a member of the Board of the Society for the Environment, the Science Steering Group for the UK’s Joint Weather and Climate Research Programme.