About me: I’m a professor of computer science at the University of Toronto. Stuff about my work (bio, publications etc) can be found on my U of T webpages. Stuff I think is worthy of a photo can be found on Flickr.

I started this blog because, after many years doing research in software engineering, I’m redirecting my research to address the challenge of climate change (here’s why). I’m hoping the blog will help me document the journey.

My challenge is to find ways to apply the knowledge and skills I already have (i.e. in software research) to the climate change challenge. And to persuade as many of my colleagues as possible to do the same. I figure that software technology is a crucial part of the picture, from the computational models built by climate scientists to understand climate systems, through to the information and control systems needed to drive a zero-carbon global society. I figure that all this stuff about living a greener life and cutting personal emissions is all very well, but distracts us from the potentially much larger contribution people with specialist knowledge and skills can make.

I started by studying the software development practices of climate scientists, to see what contribution I can make there. I’m planning more studies like this. In parallel, I’m organising workshops to get more software researchers engaged in the challenge. This is a work in progress…

I’m being helped in this challenge by a wonderful group of students at U of T. Take a look at their blogs to see what they’re up to: Ainsley Lawson; Alicia Grubb; Brent Mombourquette; Carolyn MacLeod; Jon Pipitone; Jonathan Lung; Jorge Aranda; Maria Yancheva; Samar (Summer) Sabie; Sarah Strong.