Paul Bates

Paul Bates is Professor of Hydrology at the University of Bristol and a founding shareholder and Chairman of Fathom (www.fathom.global), a flood risk analytics firm based in the UK.

He is an internationally renowned hydrologist, specialising in the science of flooding. He develops new numerical solutions to the Shallow Water equations and combines these with satellite and airborne data to advance our fundamental understanding of flood dynamics and reduce threats to life and economic losses worldwide. His work is used by multiple researchers, NGOs, multi-national companies and insurers to manage flood hazard and risk.

Previously, he was Director of the Cabot Institute and Head of the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol and has spent sabbatical periods at Laboratoire National d’Hydraulique et Environnment in Paris, the EU Joint Research Centre, Princeton University and the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab at CALTECH.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London and of the American Geophysical Union, a double winner of the Lloyd's of London Science of Risk prize and in 2019 was awarded a CBE by Queen Elizabeth II for services to flood risk management.