Professor Hywel Williams

Professor Hywel Williams is a computational scientist focused on challenges around sustainability and environmental change. He is a Professor in Environmental Data Science in the Department of Computer Science at University of Exeter, where he is PI for the SEDAlab research group. He is Director of the Centre for Environmental Intelligence and also affiliated with the Institute for Data Science & Artificial Intelligence and the Global Systems Institute. He is an Honorary Fellow at Plymouth Marine Laboratory and a Visiting Scientist at the Met Office. 

Professor Williams received his PhD in Complex Systems from University of Leeds in 2006. He then worked in the departments of Environmental Science and Computer Science at University of East Anglia. In 2011, he joined the University of Exeter, initially within the Biosciences Department (2011-2017), then within the Department of Computer Science (2017 - present). In 2019 he was promoted to Associate Professor in Data Science. In 2022, he was promoted to Professor in Environmental Data Science. He is a former Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute and has launched (and closed down) a successful spinout company.

In his research, Professor Williams applies complex systems thinking and computational methods to problems in social sciences, environmental science, evolutionary ecology, and artificial intelligence. His work has applied a range of methods including modelling, network analysis, natural language processing and machine learning.