Professor David Stephenson (he/him/his)

Professor David B. Stephenson is the founding director of the Exeter Climate Systems (XCS) research centre, which has contributed to growing and nurturing interdisciplinary climate-mathematics expertise at Exeter since he established it in 2008. 

His research focuses on the development and novel application of statistical modelling to understand climate processes and predictions. Since 1989, he has published more than 180 well-cited papers and a leading book on forecast verification (H-index of 75 citations). He was lead author on chapter 14 and contributing author on chapters 2 and 9 of the 2013 IPCC 5th assessment report.

He is an elected member of the prestigious Academia Europaea – the European Academy of Science. In 2012, he was awarded the Adrian Gill prize of the Royal Meteorological Society for pioneering interdisciplinary collaboration between climate and statistical science. From 2003-2009, he served as Editor for the Journal of Climate and from 2007-10 was an expert member on the WMO Joint Working Group on Forecast Verification. He is currently co-chair of the climate change task force of the Royal Statistical Society.

He has also developed successful partnerships with industry, which has ensured that his research has been successfully translated to improve decision-making and create wealth. In 2006, he was a founding member of the Willis Research Network, one of the world's largest partnerships between academia and the insurance industry. While Met Office joint chair (2007-12), he helped initiate and design the Met Office Academic Partnership.

He received a 1st class Honours degree in Physics at Oxford University (1982-1985) and received a PhD in Theoretical Particle Physics from Edinburgh University (1982-1988) (supervised by Profs. Peter Higgs and Richard Kenway). Concerning mathematical genealogy, he is the direct offspring of Nobel prize-winner Peter Higgs and has an Erdos number of 4.

A full list of publications can be found here on David Stephenson's personal page.