Stephen Emmott

After training in the field of digital neuroscience, Stephen Emmott became director of the External Research Office at Microsoft Research Cambridge where he brings together various teams of scientists all working on the modelling of the future of our planet up to the year 2300 and on the development of “a new kind of science”; a science that seeks to understand the interactions between biological processes and physical ones that together govern the capacity of the Earth to sustain human generated activity. A professor, and an advisor to several universities, committees and foundations, Stephen Emmott has been working to establish a diagnosis of the state of the planet and to suggest ways in which its future might be improved. He tries to alert his contemporaries to what is at stake by venturing out of the closed community of researchers, too often isolated within their own speciality or even sometimes in unhelpful competition with one other. And it's this which has brought him here today to speak, on stage and with the resources of the theatre, invited and guided by the director Katie Mitchell.

JFP, April, 2012