RMetS - General

Updates from our Science Engagement Fellows

26 June 2025

Over the past year, the RMetS Science Engagement Fellowship Programme has continued to deliver on strategic objectives of the Society. Launched in 2022, the programme offers part-time opportunities for PhD students or postdoctoral researchers to support the Society’s mission to advance the understanding and application of weather and climate, with a focus on the insurance and energy sectors.

As the Society enters the fourth year of this programme, we are delighted to introduce Conor Lamb as our new Science Engagement Fellow focused on insurance and James Mollard as our new Science Engagement Fellow focused on energy.

As we welcome Conor and James, we say goodbye to Matthew Priestley (Insurance Science Engagement Fellow 2023-2025) and Ben Hutchins (Energy Science Engagement Fellow 2024-2025) and thank them for their outstanding contributions and dedication to the Society.

Introductions from incoming SE Fellows

Conor Lamb (Insurance)

“Hi, I'm Conor and I'm really excited to get started as the Science Engagement Fellow for Insurance. I've spent the last 3 years in the insurance industry, building catastrophe models at Fathom, a flood analytics company. However, I'm now switching back into academia to start a PhD at UCL, focused on flood risk, uncertainty and decision making. In my RMetS role, I'm particularly excited to build on the great work of Matthew Priestley and Hannah Bloomfield before me, bringing together the insurance industry and weather and climate professionals, to help facilitate more robust decision making.”

James Mollard (Energy)

“Hi, I’m James, and I’m a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh. My current research involves assessing the impact of extreme heat events on assets such as transformers, cables and substations. However, my research background incorporates climate impacts and attribution much more widely, as well as some climate modelling and satellite observation work! I’m looking forward to getting stuck into the role, advancing the great work that Ben Hutchins and Matthew Wright have done before me and continuing to grow and improve the various events, special interest groups and engagement activities that are in the pipeline for the coming year.”

Reflections from our outgoing SE Fellows
Matthew Priestley (Insurance)

It has been a great pleasure to spend the last two years as the Science Engagement Fellow for Insurance with RMetS. During this time, I have worked one day per week leading the society’s engagement with the insurance and financial sectors, as well as managing the Insurance Special Interest Group. This role has been a great experience, offering numerous benefits and enabling me to grow both personally and professionally. I have gained valuable skills and built a wider network that I will carry forward in my career.

There have been many highlights during the last two years, all of which I have been very proud to help lead. We ran two workshops in January 2024 and 2025. The first led to several publications under the theme of Navigating Climate Challenges for Insurance and the second promoted collaboration between industry and academia by showcasing the latest industry research. I produced a write-up of the 2025 event, which brought together >90 scientists from industry and academia to discuss current research and develop new networks. These workshops were a culmination of many months’ work and were a great experience for me.

It has also been good to see the support for and engagement with the Weather and Climate Hazards webinar. This annual event has run since 2023 and provides a valuable platform to share the latest cutting-edge science on risk and hazard with a diverse audience.

The Science Engagement Fellowship has helped me develop many skills I use in my research and other academic activities. Conversations with industry have helped me to think about the wider implications of my research and how I frame my scientific findings. I have also gained a deeper understanding of how science is applied in the insurance sector, and how we can better position academic research to suit this purpose. A key takeaway is that this should be a long-standing process, to allow the expertise of both groups to feed into scientific results that are usable for all stakeholders, fit for purpose and have the correct societal implications. This role has also helped widen my professional network, which will hopefully aid me in future collaborative work.

There have been so many great people that I’ve worked alongside, from all the Insurance SIG members to the numerous Science Engagement Fellows (Matt Wright, Ben Hutchins, Regan Mudhar). It’s also been a real pleasure to work with the team at RMetS, specifically Hannah Mallinson, who oversaw all the work and numerous events we hosted superbly.

To sum up, it’s been a lot of fun doing this role over the past two years. I’m very happy that RMetS will be continuing their engagement work with the insurance sector as it is a continually evolving area with wide-reaching societal impact. I look forward to seeing the exciting plans ahead, including the work of the next Science Engagement Fellow, and staying involved in the Insurance SIG.

Ben Hutchins (Energy)

My year as the Energy Science Engagement Fellow has flown by and I have thoroughly enjoyed working with the RMetS team! Within my role, I have spent one day per week working on science engagement activities, collaborating with energy sector stakeholders, and developing written outputs for the energy sector. The development, coordination, and review of these activities has been overseen by the Energy Special Interest Group (SIG), which includes key stakeholders from the public sector, private sector, and regulatory bodies.

There have been many highlights from the past year, with the most significant being the delivery of the first State of the Climate for the UK Energy Sector report, which was coordinated by Matthew Wright (the previous Energy Science Engagement Fellow) and myself. This assessed the impact of weather and climate on the UK energy sector between January 2023 and April 2024, in terms of both supply security and infrastructure damages. The report would not have happened without the help of Hannah Bloomfield and James Fallon, as well as the oversight of Hannah Mallinson and Beth Woodhams, so I owe each of them a debt of gratitude for their time. We are hoping to deliver an updated report this year, covering the weather impacts between April 2024 and April 2025, so watch this space!

Additionally, I enjoyed hosting the third Seasonal Forecast Outlook meeting in November 2024, which had over 100 attendees for the third consecutive year. Over winter 2025, we hosted the first two ‘Energy Insights’ webinars, which are more targeted deep dives into specific topics. Between the two events, we hosted eight speakers from a diverse range of energy sector roles and reached around 200 participants with the combined attendance. I was lucky enough to attend conferences in Birmingham (Risk Day 2025) and Padua, Italy (International Conference of Energy Meteorology 2025), where I had the opportunity to promote the Society’s science engagement activities.

Personally, I have found the Science Engagement Fellowship to be rewarding in a multitude of ways; I have developed new skills, improved my public speaking, and expanded my network. While the role has without doubt been beneficial from a career standpoint, I have also really enjoyed working on the Society’s science engagement activities. This is, in part, due to the great team at the Society and the members of the Energy SIG, who I have thoroughly enjoyed working with. If I had any advice for the incoming fellow, I would want to highlight that the role really is what you make of it.