CSER - Key Persons

Aaron examines the feasibility, desirability, and governance of last-ditch efforts to address climate change (developing new technologies to pull greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere, and reflecting sunlight to cool the Earth). He is a PhD Scholar and Lecturer in Climate Policy at the Fenner School of Environment & Society at the Australian National University.

Akaraseth Puranasamriddhi

Job Titles:

Research Affiliate & Former Research Assistant

Akaraseth is a former Research Assistant in Climate Risk & Sustainable Finance at the University of Cambridge. Previously, he worked as a Research Assistant at University College London and University of Oxford, focusing on sustainable energy transitions in sub-Saharan Africa. He also worked as a Climate Change Consultant at United Nations Development Programme - Global Environmental Finance (UNDP-GEF) Unit in delivering sustainable energy and climate change mitigation strategies across the Asia-Pacific region.

Alex Marcoci

Job Titles:

Research Associate

Alex is part of the AI:FAR research project and a Research Fellow at Clare Hall. He studies collective decision-making, argumentation and foresight. He worked on structured expert elicitation techniques for predicting the reliability of research in the social & behavioural sciences (the repliCATS project) and on decision-support tools for measuring and improving the quality of argumentation in intelligence reports (the SWARM project). Alex is the Principal Investigator of the "Measuring the Quality of Collective Reasoning" project, funded by the British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grants (July 2023 - December 2024). Before joining CSER, he was a Research Associate in Linguistics and Argumentation Theory in the Centre for Argument Technology at the University of Dundee, a Teaching Assistant Professor and core faculty member in the Philosophy, Politics and Economics Program at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and a Fellow in the Department of Government at LSE. He has a PhD in Philosophy from LSE.

Alex McLaughlin

Job Titles:

Research Associate

Alex's research attempts to illuminate and address the moral questions that arise at the intersection of global justice and existential risk. His current project aims to provide a normative framework for thinking about claims to a scarce global carbon budget, taking into account both widespread noncompliance with obligations towards climate change and the existential risks associated with severe climate impacts. Alex's background is in political philosophy. He was previously a Leverhulme Doctoral Scholar in Climate Justice at the University of Reading, and his broader research interests include egalitarianism, the contemporary relevance of benefiting from historical injustice and methodology in political theory. Alex was awarded a 3-year British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship, starting September 2020.

Alexandra Klein

Job Titles:

Research Assistant

Alice Jondorf

Job Titles:

Centre Co - Ordinator ( Part - Time Secondment )

Alice is on a part-time secondment to job share with Clare Arnstein as Centre Coordinator. She is combining this with her role as Centre Administrator at the Centre of Development Studies in the Department of POLIS.

Allan Dafoe

Job Titles:

Research Affiliate

Allan Dafoe's mission is to help steer AI for the benefit of all humanity. Allan is lead of the Long-term Strategy and Governance Team at DeepMind; President, Centre for the Governance of AI; Co-Founder, Cooperative AI Foundation; former faculty University of Oxford and Yale.

Amritha Jayanti

Job Titles:

Visiting Researcher, July - September 2019

Amritha is currently a Visiting Summer Researcher with the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER). She has a background in computer science and public policy, including as a policy researcher at the Brookings Institution's Center for Technology Innovation in Washington D.C., as a product manager for a San Francisco-based startup, and as a director of various tech-centered nonprofits. She holds a degree in Science and Technology Policy from the University of Maryland.

Anastasia Chau

Job Titles:

Research Affiliate & Former Research Assistant

Anastasia researches risk communication for Global Catastrophic Risks and has previously worked in sustainability consulting and for a research project linking gender and policymaking. Anastasia holds a BSc in Economics from King's College London and has recently graduated with an MSc in Risk, Disasters and Resilience from University College London. She is currently undertaking a PhD in disaster warning efficacy at University College London.

Andrew Tanentzap

Job Titles:

Research Affiliate

Angus Mercer

an..@longtermresilience.org

Job Titles:

Co - Founder and Chief Executive of the Centre for Long - Term Resilience
Research Affiliate

Angus is co-founder and Chief Executive of the Centre for Long-Term Resilience, a non-profit that connects policymakers to leading academics who work on some of the most important long-term challenges of our time. A lawyer by training, Angus was formerly Head of External Affairs at the UK Department for International Development, where he also served as a policy adviser and speechwriter in the Secretary of State's office. Prior to his time in government, Angus was part of the Senior Management Team of a leading public affairs consultancy in London, where his clients included the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Carnegie Corporation and the Boston Consulting Group's Centre for Public Impact.

Asaf Tzachor

Job Titles:

Research Affiliate & Former Research Associate

Asaf is an interdisciplinary researcher, practitioner, and educator at the interface of sustainability sciences, emerging technologies, and global risks. He is a Research Affiliate and Former Research Associate in CSER, and an Associate Professor for Sustainability at Reichman University.

Beatrice Crona

Job Titles:

Advisor
Professor of Sustainability Science

Beatrice is a Professor of Sustainability Science. She is the Science Director at the Stockholm Resilience Center and the Executive Director of the research program Global Economic Dynamics and the Biosphere housed at the Royal Swedish Academy of Science. She received her PhD in Systems Ecology in 2006, and the first decade of her academic career included various aspects of fisheries governance in small-scale fisheries in developing countries, ranging from East Africa to Philippines. Her focus then was on understanding barriers to the development of institutions that promote both sustainable resource governance and equitable resource distribution and poverty alleviation. This work involved understanding the role of traders (middlemen) in small-scale fisheries value chains play for perpetuating unsustainable dynamics in small-scale fisheries as a result of patron-client type relationships in the market-place. Later she worked to assess the effects of international seafood trade on local communities/fisheries outcomes. Throughout her career, she has combined her background in marine ecology with methods from sociology, political science, political ecology and economics; ranging from social network analysis, to value chain analysis and purely qualitative analysis, such as ethnography.

Belinda Cleeland

Job Titles:

Advisor
Director of Policy at the Simon Institute for Longterm Governance

Belinda is the Director of Policy at the Simon Institute for Longterm Governance (SI), a Geneva-based think tank that works to mitigate global catastrophic risks. At SI, she leads the content team to synthesize research and develop policy recommendations for the multilateral system to ensure the safe development of transformative technologies. Originally from Australia, Belinda has 15 years of experience working in the international sector in Geneva. Prior to joining SI, she was the Head of Research and Innovation at the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), leading ISO's foresight efforts to identify future opportunities for standardization, and its research efforts to better understand the impacts of international standards. She also has experience working in risk governance through her time at the International Risk Governance Council, a science-based think tank developing frameworks for improving global governance of risk, identifying and making sense of emerging or systemic risk issues, and providing risk governance policy advice for decision-makers. Belinda holds a Master's degree in International Affairs from the Graduate Institute, Geneva, as well as a Bachelor of Arts with Honors (Political Science and French) and a Bachelor of Science (Biochemistry and Genetics) from the University of Melbourne, Australia.

Ben Holt

Job Titles:

Visiting Researcher, May 2023 - May 2024

Ben is the Global Lead for Strategic Foresight at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). This means he helps teams around the world explore possible futures so we can prepare for potential crises, uncover new opportunities for action, and make better decisions today. He is working with CSER to explore attitudes to risk, creative communications around complex hazards, and how we might use existential risks as a lens to help reimagine humanitarian action. Drawing on the depth and breadth of the CSER community, and connecting them to our communities and aid projects around the world, promises to generate some really powerful new ideas. Ben has spent 20 years in the humanitarian sector and the media, helping organisations adapt to a changing world.

Beth Barnes

Job Titles:

Research Affiliate

Beth founded FuSe (Future of Sentience), a student society focusing on improving the long-run future, while studying Computer Science at the University of Cambridge. She has a particular interest in machine learning.

Bonnie Wintle

Bonnie was a postdoctoral Research Associate at CSER. Her role at CSER was to ‘horizon scan' for the early identification, management and mitigation of possible extreme risks associated with future technological advances, under the direction of Prof Bill Sutherland (University of Cambridge, Department of Zoology). She is also a postdoctoral affiliate of Newnham College, Cambridge. Bonnie's previous work has explored ways to improve expert judgement for environmental decision-making and biosecurity, and was completed in the School of Biosciences at the University of Melbourne under the supervision of Prof. Mark Burgman and Dr Fiona Fidler. She has a background in ecology, and has also worked as a cartographer and in government for a national parks agency. Her work was supported by the Templeton World Charity Foundation as part of the Managing Extreme Technological Risk project at CSER.

Carla Zoe Cremer

Job Titles:

Research Affiliate

Carla Zoe works on AI forecasting. Her background is in life science and psychology at LMU Munich and ETH Zurich, and she has received awards and scholarships such as Lehre@LMU and the Max Weber Programme for experimental research in neurobiology. Zoe has presented philosophical work on AI control at the conference Decision&AI, and founded the Zurich AI Alignment Reading Club.

Caroline Baylon

Job Titles:

Research Affiliate

Caroline Baylon works on the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Future Generations, which is co-running an inquiry on long-termism in policy and a workshop series on autonomous weapons. Caroline serves as Research Lead in AXA's Strategy, Research and Threat Horizon team, within an internal think tank looking at future trends in cyber security, AI and technology. Her research at present focuses on the use of AI by cybercriminals, both now and in the future, and on cyber security vulnerabilities in connected and driverless cars. She co-leads the team's biannual cyber security foresight publication and has established a scenario-planning programme within the company. Caroline also serves as a facilitator for an executive education course on scenario-planning taught at the University of Oxford's Saïd Business School. Previously, Caroline was the lead on cyber security at Chatham House (The Royal Institute of International Affairs) in London, United Kingdom, where her work centered on cyber security threats to critical infrastructure, notably on those to nuclear facilities and satellites. She was also Editor of the Journal of Cyber Policy, a peer reviewed academic journal published by Routledge, Taylor & Francis. Caroline has also served as an independent contractor for the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, carrying out research projects on the activities of cyber proxy groups and on prospects for curbing the proliferation of cyber weapons. She holds a Master of Science in Social Science of the Internet from Balliol College, University of Oxford and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Stanford University.

Catherine Richards

Job Titles:

Research Affiliate & Former Research Associate

During her time at CSER (2020-2022), Catherine's work focused on developing our understanding of global risks, governance mechanisms and technical solutions in relation to complex critical infrastructure systems. Her work primarily spanned environmental risks, future foods biotechnology and artificial intelligence alongside complementary digital technologies across the water, energy and food sectors as well as the transport, waste, health and space sectors. Currently, Catherine works as a management consultant at a top tier firm, where she leverages over a decade of experience in real assets, technology and sustainability to drive innovative strategy, finance and engineering solutions. Previously, Catherine built a climate tech startup, dappled in real estate and proptech, and worked as an engineer at a top Fortune 500 company in the energy sector and government corporation in the water sector. She completed a PhD in Engineering on climate change, food systems and society at University of Cambridge, and holds BEng(Civ) and BEng(Env) degrees from University of Newcastle, Australia. Catherine has published in the Nature portfolio, is a John Monash Scholar and was recognised in Forbes 30 Under 30 for Industry Innovation.

Charlotte Hammer

ch..@gmx.net

Job Titles:

Research Affiliate

Charlotte is an applied infectious diseases epidemiologist who specialises in emerging and high-consequence infectious diseases. Her current research is primarily concerned with the early detection and prevention of spillover-borne outbreaks of emerging zoonotic diseases. She also maintains a strong involvement in applied infectious diseases public health practice, particularly in outbreak response, epidemic intelligence, and capacity building. Charlotte completed her PhD in the Health Protection Research Unit for Emergency Preparedness and Response under the supervision of Professor Paul Hunter on outbreak risks in humanitarian emergencies. After her PhD, she worked as an epidemiologist with the European Field Epidemiology Training Program. During that time, she was involved in the COVID-19 response in the European Union and Papua New Guinea as well as the Ebola response in the North-Eastern DRC.

Christian R. Boehm

Christian works at the interface of modern biotechnology and digital change. His current research is focused on benefits and risk management of synthetic biology in context of automation, digital change, and artificial intelligence. Christian has a background in molecular biology, computer science, and scientific policy advice, and has founded the nonprofit organisation EUSynBioS to raise awareness for societal implications of synthetic biology in students and early-career researchers.

Clare Arnstein

Job Titles:

Centre Co - Ordinator

Clare is the Centre Co-ordinator and main point of contact for CSER, providing administrative support to the active research grants by managing the day to day running of the centre, HR and recruitment, monitoring grant expenditure, finances and reporting, organising events, managing communications and social media, and other general administration related to grant funding, as well as research grant applications. The Centre Co-ordinator, PA and Administrative Assistant and Project Coordinator make up the CSER core administrative team. Clare's administrative career started in a Suffolk primary school before joining the University of Cambridge as Office Administrator for the School of Arts and Humanities in 2014. She was Executive Assistant to Vice-Chancellor Professor Stephen Toope prior to her CSER appointment in December 2018. Clare studied Sociology at the University of Sheffield. Clare is currently working part-time at CSER (Tuesday and Friday) while on secondment to CRASSH (Monday, Wednesday, Thursday) as Deputy Centre Administrator until October 2023.

Clarissa Rios Rojas

Job Titles:

Research Affiliate & Former Research Associate

Hi everyone! I am thrilled to introduce myself and share my background and experience, which have always been driven by a passion for science and a desire to positively impact the world. As a science diplomat and government science advisor with a PhD in Molecular Biology and a Master's degree in Biomedicine & Neuroscience, I have dedicated my career to bridging the gap between science and policymaking. My motivations for this career path stem from my belief that science and technology have the power to shape the present and the future, but only if their risks and benefits are understood and responsibly managed. This led me to focus on researching the dangers posed by emerging technologies and creating Science-Policy interfaces that provide scientific evidence and advice to various policy stakeholders, including the public sector, businesses, and civil society. I have pursued this work also at the University of Cambridge, where I am dedicated to ensuring that science informs policy and vice versa. Through my experience working with international organizations such as UN Women, the World Economic Forum's Future Councils, the G20, the WHO, and the UN Secretary-General's High-Level Advisory Board, I have had the opportunity to develop expertise in a range of topics from women's economic empowerment to global catastrophic risks and the co-creation of policy. My work as an expert advisor for organizations such as the OECD, the UK parliament, and the UNDRR has allowed me to contribute to initiatives promoting international security and managing global risks such as the misuse of AI and bioweapons. With a background that includes positions at institutions like the Ministry of Environment (Peru), the European Commission, the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, and the University of Queensland, I am eager to continue my work at the forefront of the intersection of science, policy, and emerging technologies. I am a passionate professional with a strong background in foresight, science diplomacy, and managing global risks. I am eager to bring my skills and knowledge to an organization dedicated to positively impacting Artificial Intelligence Strategy, Policy, and Ethics and committed to responsible AI development.

Constantin Arnscheidt

Job Titles:

Research Associate

Constantin's research focuses on cascading global catastrophic risk: how might small stressors trigger system failure that leads to much larger catastrophes? He is attacking this problem using a diversity of approaches, but with a particular grounding in nonlinear dynamics, Earth science, and the study of complex systems. He has a PhD in Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences from MIT, where he worked on the intersection of these topics, and an undergraduate degree in Physics from Harvard College.

David Krueger

Job Titles:

Member of Cambridge 's Computational
Research Affiliate

David is a member of Cambridge's Computational and Biological Learning lab (CBL), where he leads a research group focused on Deep Learning an AI Alignment. David has been interested in the potential benefits, social impacts, and catastrophic risks of AI since he learned that AI wasn't pure science fiction at the beginning of his undergraduate studies (in Mathematics, at Reed College) in 2007. After hearing about Deep Learning in 2012, he realized progress in AI was about to take off, and decided to enter the field, beginning his graduate studies at the University of Montreal in 2013. His research has covered many areas in Deep Learning, including generative modeling, Bayesian Deep Learning, understanding generalization, and robustness. His current interests are primarily: 1) formalizing and testing AI Alignment concerns and approaches, especially to do with learning reward functions, 2) understanding Deep Learning, and 3) techniques for aligning foundation models.

Dennis Müller

Job Titles:

Research Affiliate

Dennis is a graduate student of mathematics at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. Before that, he attended Bonn University and obtained his undergraduate degree from Cambridge University. He also has a professional background in software development. Dennis's current research focuses on ethics in mathematics and operations research. He studies ethical challenges and societal risks related to modern mathematical technologies, including AI, modelling, and finance. From 2017 to 2020, Dennis held a Reuben scholarship. Since 2018, he also holds a stipend with the German Academic Scholarship Foundation, Germany's oldest and most prestigious scholarship foundation. In 2022, he held a Design and Technology Fellowship at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE), where he studied the role of German engineers in the Holocaust and learned about legal ethics concerning modern technologies. Dennis is also a founding member of the Ethics in Mathematics Project and has served as the president of the Cambridge University Ethics in Mathematics Society.

Des Browne

Job Titles:

Visiting Researcher

Di Cooke

Job Titles:

Research Affiliate

Di Cooke is a Visiting Fellow in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, as well as a Research Affiliate at CSER and at the Centre for the Governance of AI. Di's work focuses on AI risks and governance in a defence context, along with the impact of AI on intelligence activities within and outside of the conventional Intelligence Community. As part of the AI FAR Team, Di's research has included examining the role of AI in high-risk scenarios, such as nuclear escalation; analysing the nascent development of dual-use technology regulations, like electricity, to provide insights for effective AI governance; interrogating potential compute governance frameworks; identifying and addressing ethical and risk-related challenges facing military efforts to operationalise AI safely and securely. Di was also involved in leading the organisation of Track 1.5 dialogues between UK Defence, industry, and academia on AI risks within the defence landscape, and on internal AI FAR strategy directions and considerations. Finally, part of her work was a secondment with the MOD to support the development of strategic-level AI policy, where she built the MOD's assurance guidance materials to direct and inform its AI operationalization approach in accordance with its AI Ethical Principles. Di is also an OSINT practitioner, engaging in both private and government-led work and consultation. She is a doctoral candidate in the War Studies Department at King's College London, holding an MA in Intelligence and International Security from KCL as well as a joint BA in International Relations and Psychology from the University of St Andrews.

Dr Adrian Currie

Job Titles:

Editor

Adrian is currently a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology at Exeter. He was previously a Research Associate at CSER, where he looked at the relationship between the culture of science, and our capacity to understand, predict and mitigate low probability, high impact events. His work was supported by the Templeton World Charity Foundation as part of the Managing Extreme Technological Risk project at CSER. Adrian is primarily interested in how scientists successfully generate knowledge in tricky circumstances: where evidence is thin on the ground, targets are highly complex and obstinate, and our knowledge is limited. This has led him to examine the historical sciences - geology, palaeontology and archaeology - and to argue that the messy, opportunistic (‘methodologically omnivorous') and disunified nature of these sciences often underwrites their success. His interest in knowledge-production has also led him to think about the natures of, and relationships between, scientific tools such as experiments, models and observations, and their use in sciences whose targets are less amenable to lab work - ecology and climate science, for instance. Adrian received his PhD from Australian National University, and prior to joining CSER has also studied and taught at Victoria University of Wellington, Sydney University, the University of Calgary, and IRH in Bucharest. He is a founder of, and regular contributor to, Extinct, the philosophy of paleontology blog.

Dr Catherine Rhodes

Job Titles:

Research Affiliate & Former Executive Director

Dr Catherine Rhodes was Executive Director of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk from 2019 to 2021, and an Academic Project Manager at CSER for three years before that. She was also a Senior Research Associate with the Biosecurity Research Initiative at St Catharine's College (BioRISC). Catherine now has affiliate status with both CSER and BioRISC. In the context of addressing global risks, her work broadly focuses on understanding the intersection and combination of risk stemming from technologies and risk stemming from governance (or lack of it). Catherine has particular expertise in international governance of biotechnology, biosecurity and broader biological risk management issues. She has a background in international relations, but has engaged in extensive interdisciplinary work. Her PhD was funded as part of a Project to Strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention at the Bradford Disarmament Research Centre, and she retains a strong interest in international actions to prevent misuse of bioscience. This includes contributions to projects on the development of biosecurity and ethics education and on improving science and technology review in the biological and chemical weapons control regimes. Catherine worked for the Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation at Manchester University from 2008-2015, where her work included: elaborating the meaning and content of scientific responsibility at the global level; investigation of science advisory processes in international organisations; and a substantial study of the international governance of genetic resources, which has significant implications for the use of biosciences in managing major global challenges.

Dr Ellen Quigley

Job Titles:

Senior Research Associate
Research Affiliate & Former Senior Research Associate

Dr Ellen Quigley was a Senior Research Associate in Climate Risk & Sustainable Finance at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) and is the Special Adviser (Responsible Investment) to the Chief Financial Officer at the University of Cambridge. Her work centres on the mitigation of climate change and inequality through the investment policies and practices of institutional investors. She is from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, and holds an AB in English literature from Harvard College, an MSc in Nature, Society, and Environmental Policy from the University of Oxford, and a PhD in economics education from the University of Cambridge. Her article, Universal Ownership in Practice: A Practical Investment Framework for Asset Owners, won the GRASFI Paper Prize for Potential Impact on Sustainable Finance Practices in 2020. Ellen now leads the Finance for Systemic Change Centre in the Department of Land Economy.

Elizabeth Seger

el..@governance.ai

Job Titles:

Research Affiliate
Researcher at the Center

Elizabeth Seger is a researcher at the Center for the Governance of AI (GovAI) in Oxford where she investigates the real and potential impacts of AI on the production, dissemination, and internalization of information in technologically advanced societies. The aim of Elizabeth's research is to identify specific "epistemic threats" posed by AI technologies, to determine whether those threats yield or exacerbate pathways to existential risks, and to appraise how those pathways might most effectively be intervened upon. Elizabeth's work is an extension of the Epistemic Security project she led with CSER in 2020 and with whom she continues to collaborate. Elizabeth recently completed her PhD in Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge during which time she was a research assistant at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (LCFI). Elizabeth's PhD research investigated foundations for trust in user-AI relationships in analogue to trust in human lay-expert relationships. Elizabeth also holds an MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge and a BSc in Human Biology and Society from UCLA.

Esmé Booth

Job Titles:

Project Coordinator

Esmé works as Project Coordinator for CSER's research projects. She has a background in project management and coordination at the University, and Marketing and Communications within the academic sector.

Fazl Barez

Job Titles:

Research Affiliate
Researcher at Edinburgh Center for Robotics

Fazl is a researcher at Edinburgh Center for Robotics and leads the technical development content at AI Safety Hub. He is working on safety applications of machine learning as well as AI x-risk field building. He has a background in Economics and AI and has previously worked at Amazon, Huawei and the DataLab.

Freya Jephcott

Job Titles:

Senior Research Associate

Freya's work is primarily concerned with the effectiveness of outbreak response systems in resource-limited settings, and their management in outbreaks of uncertain aetiology. In addition to her research, Freya also participates in applied and policy work on complex health emergencies with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the World Health Organization (WHO). Freya obtained bachelor's degrees in medical science and social policy from the Australian National University (ANU) and University of Sydney respectively, before completing a master's and a doctoral degree in medical anthropology and epidemiology at the University of Cambridge.

Georgiana Gilgallon

Job Titles:

Director of Communications at the Future of Life Institute
Visiting Researcher, January 2022 - December 2022

Georgiana (Gigi) is the Director of Communications at the Future of Life Institute, an independent nonprofit that seeks to reduce large-scale, extreme risks from transformative technologies. Her focus in this role is improving media narratives around extreme threats to constructively influence society's perceptions of these risks, and thus increase its willingness to support mitigation efforts. As a Visiting Researcher at CSER, Gigi will work closely with Lara Mani, who is working to build an empirical evidence base for communication techniques in the context of global risk.

Gorm Shackelford

Gorm is now a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at the University of Cambridge's Department of Zoology. He is working in collaboration with CSER, Conservation Evidence, and BioRISC (the Biosecurity Research Initiative at St Catharine's College) to synthesize evidence for the effectiveness of management practices for invasive species. At CSER, he developed an automated method of evidence synthesis, using machine learning, text and data mining to create a database of information on catastrophic risks and interventions that could minimize these risks: The Existential Risk Research Assessment (TERRA). He has a background in biodiversity, conservation, and ecosystem services. His research is focused on evidence synthesis: systematic reviews of scientific studies about biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services, especially in agricultural ecosystems. He is developing new methods of evidence synthesis, including an online system for interactive meta-analysis that allows users to filter the global evidence base to find results that are relevant to their local conditions (www.metadataset.com). He is also interested in using subject-wide evidence synthesis in combination with multi-criteria decision analysis to develop evidence-based tools for decision makers (http://mcda.metadataset.com/mediterranean/).

Haydn Belfield

Job Titles:

Research Associate
Academic Project Manager

Haydn has been a Research Associate and Academic Project Manager at the University of Cambridge's Centre for the Study of Existential Risk for the past five years. In that time the Centre tripled in size, and he advised the UK, US, and Singaporean governments; the EU, UN and OECD; and leading technology companies. He has over 30 publications, including on climate change, pandemics, and societal collapse, but most of his work is on the security implications of artificial intelligence (AI). Key publications include 'The malicious use of AI: Forecasting, prevention, and mitigation' and 'Toward trustworthy AI development: mechanisms for supporting verifiable claims'. Previously he worked in UK politics as the Senior Parliamentary Researcher to a Labour MP in the Shadow Cabinet, and was seconded to several general election and referendum campaigns. He is also an Associate Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (University of Cambridge). He was a Policy Associate at the Global Priorities Project (University of Oxford) and the first Development Director of the Centre for Effective Altruism. He is a DPhil/PhD Candidate in International Relations, and has an MSc in Politics Research and a BA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE), all from the University of Oxford.