Diverse Voices: International Day of Persons with Disabilities
LOCATION
Virtual - Hosted on Zoom
Join us for our January edition of our “Diverse Voices” online series which has been inspired by the International Day of Persons with Disabilities that falls on December 3rd. These informal conversations are helping to amplify and celebrate the diversity of scientists working in and around the field of weather and climate in the UK. In this session, we will hear from two climate scientists with lived experience of disability. They will talk about their background and journey to where they are today. Please join us to learn about our speakers’ paths and to ask any questions you may have about their careers and work.
Speakers
Dr Charles JR Williams, BA DPhil FRGS
Lecturer in Earth System Modelling (University of Bristol), Senior Research Fellow in Climate Science (UCL), Tutor In Climate Science (University of Oxford), Senior Visiting Research Fellow (University of Reading)
Charlie graduated from the University of Sussex in 2003 with an honours degree in Geography and Environmental Science. Despite being offered an MSc place at UEA, Charlie decided to do things the hard way and go straight into a PhD, also at Sussex, looking at extreme rainfall variability over southern Africa. He completed this approximately 2.5 years later, moving to the University of Reading and starting a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkins Fellowship, which he won towards the end of the PhD. The Fellowship ended (after an extension) 7 years later, in 2013, by which time Charlie had established himself as a recognised expert in present-day and future tropical rainfall variability and extremes, and associated oceanic and land-surface interactions. By this time Charlie had been promoted to Senior Research Fellow, and spent the next 5 years or so undertaking short-term research projects in which he gradually moved away from present-day and future climate variability and change, instead focusing on palaeoclimate change. This led him to a move to the University of Bristol in 2018, to take up a post using the latest version of the UK Hadley Centre's physical climate model to simulate past climates such as the Pliocene (~3 million years ago) and early Eocene (~50 million years ago). Over the next few years he became the leading expert in using the UK Hadley Centre's climate model to model palaeoclimate change, and was involved (either doing the work himself or supervising others) in all of the palaeoclimate simulations that went into CMIP6 and the most recent IPCC Assessment Report.
Currently, Charlie has built his own full-time academic position by combining 2 jobs at part-time each: he is a Lecturer in Earth system Modelling at the University of Bristol, where he convenes and teaches a number of MSc courses and is currently the Dissertations Director for the whole School, and a Senior Research Fellow at UCL, where he is currently looking at the Indian Ocean Dipole during the mid-Pliocene thanks to a NERC grant that he recently won. And if that doesn't keep him busy enough, Charlie is also a part-time tutor at the University of Oxford, where once a year he teaches an adult education class in climate change.
Charlie also happens to be highly physically disabled, requiring the use of a specialised electric wheelchair, non-invasive ventilation and 24/7 care, provided by a team of students from the local university, which he manages himself. He has been involved in various EDI initiatives, including Athena Swan and the Disabled Staff Network (which he co-founded and chaired for several years) at Reading, and the Disability and Wellbeing Staff group at Bristol.
Registration
REGISTRATION IS NOW CLOSED
Registration for this event is closed.
If you have any queries with regards to this event or require any further information please contact us at meetings@rmets.org.
We take data privacy seriously. Please read the RMetS privacy policy to find out more.
Join us for our January edition of our “Diverse Voices” online series which has been inspired by the International Day of Persons with Disabilities that falls on December 3rd. These informal conversations are helping to amplify and celebrate the diversity of scientists working in and around the field of weather and climate in the UK. In this session, we will hear from two climate scientists with lived experience of disability. They will talk about their background and journey to where they are today. Please join us to learn about our speakers’ paths and to ask any questions you may have about their careers and work.
Speakers
Dr Charles JR Williams, BA DPhil FRGS
Lecturer in Earth System Modelling (University of Bristol), Senior Research Fellow in Climate Science (UCL), Tutor In Climate Science (University of Oxford), Senior Visiting Research Fellow (University of Reading)
Charlie graduated from the University of Sussex in 2003 with an honours degree in Geography and Environmental Science. Despite being offered an MSc place at UEA, Charlie decided to do things the hard way and go straight into a PhD, also at Sussex, looking at extreme rainfall variability over southern Africa. He completed this approximately 2.5 years later, moving to the University of Reading and starting a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkins Fellowship, which he won towards the end of the PhD. The Fellowship ended (after an extension) 7 years later, in 2013, by which time Charlie had established himself as a recognised expert in present-day and future tropical rainfall variability and extremes, and associated oceanic and land-surface interactions. By this time Charlie had been promoted to Senior Research Fellow, and spent the next 5 years or so undertaking short-term research projects in which he gradually moved away from present-day and future climate variability and change, instead focusing on palaeoclimate change. This led him to a move to the University of Bristol in 2018, to take up a post using the latest version of the UK Hadley Centre's physical climate model to simulate past climates such as the Pliocene (~3 million years ago) and early Eocene (~50 million years ago). Over the next few years he became the leading expert in using the UK Hadley Centre's climate model to model palaeoclimate change, and was involved (either doing the work himself or supervising others) in all of the palaeoclimate simulations that went into CMIP6 and the most recent IPCC Assessment Report.
Currently, Charlie has built his own full-time academic position by combining 2 jobs at part-time each: he is a Lecturer in Earth system Modelling at the University of Bristol, where he convenes and teaches a number of MSc courses and is currently the Dissertations Director for the whole School, and a Senior Research Fellow at UCL, where he is currently looking at the Indian Ocean Dipole during the mid-Pliocene thanks to a NERC grant that he recently won. And if that doesn't keep him busy enough, Charlie is also a part-time tutor at the University of Oxford, where once a year he teaches an adult education class in climate change.
Charlie also happens to be highly physically disabled, requiring the use of a specialised electric wheelchair, non-invasive ventilation and 24/7 care, provided by a team of students from the local university, which he manages himself. He has been involved in various EDI initiatives, including Athena Swan and the Disabled Staff Network (which he co-founded and chaired for several years) at Reading, and the Disability and Wellbeing Staff group at Bristol.
Registration
REGISTRATION IS NOW CLOSED
Registration for this event is closed.
If you have any queries with regards to this event or require any further information please contact us at meetings@rmets.org.
We take data privacy seriously. Please read the RMetS privacy policy to find out more.
