Professor Louise Slater

Professor of Hydroclimatology

Associate Head, Social Sciences Division (Research & Impact)
Academic Lead, REF 2029 Main Panel C, University of Oxford
Non-Executive Director, Oxford University Innovation
UKRI Future Leaders Fellow
Academic Lead, ESRC Impact Acceleration Account
Academic Lead, Environment Impact Acceleration Account
Co-investigator, Intelligent Earth Centre for Doctoral Training in AI for the Environment.

Academic Profile

Louise Slater is Professor of Hydroclimatology and Associate Head of the University of Oxford's Social Sciences Division for Research and Impact, with responsibility for research, impact, innovation and engagement across 15 departments. She is a member of the Division's Senior Leadership Team.

Her research examines how floods, droughts and heat hazards are changing, how they can be predicted, and how they affect mortality and socioeconomic systems. Her work combines hydrology, climate science, statistics and machine learning, spanning process-based understanding, large-scale analysis and forecasting.

She has held competitive awards totalling more than £22 million as PI or Co-I and leads major partnerships with government, philanthropy and industry. Her current programmes include a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship on the dynamic drivers of flood risk, a Minderoo Foundation-funded programme developing a global early warning system for heat-related mortality, and the £2 million SMART-HS programme on smart hydropower forecasting in Southeast Asia. Her team developed Global River Topology (GRIT), an open global river network now used in flood modelling and forecasting.

At University level, Professor Slater is Academic Lead for REF 2029 Main Panel C, Academic Lead for the ESRC and Environment Impact Acceleration Accounts, and a member of Oxford's research and innovation Governance Group. She is also a Non-Executive Director of Oxford University Innovation, with collective responsibility for strategy, finance, risk and commercialisation policy.

Professor Slater also contributes to national and international research strategy and funding. In 2026, she chaired a NERC panel for the AI for Environmental Science programme.

Before joining Oxford, she held academic positions at Loughborough University and Queen Mary University of London. At Oxford, she was a Fellow and Tutor at Hertford College from 2018 to 2025. She trained at the Ecole Normale Superieure de Lettres et Sciences Humaines in Lyon as a Normalienne and holds a PhD in Earth and Environmental Sciences from the University of St Andrews.

Awards

Philip Leverhulme Prize in Earth Science, 2024
Gordon Warwick Award, 2023
Hydrologic Sciences Early Career Award, 2022
Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award, 2021
Gill Memorial Award, 2021

Current Research

Selected Research Projects

2026-2028: PI, NERC AI for Environmental Science, EARTHFLOW-AI.
2025-2028: PI, UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship (FLF) Renewal, DRIFT.
2025-2027: PI, Minderoo Foundation, Global Forecasting of Lethal Heat.
2025-2028: PI, Ayrton Challenge programme, SMART-HS: Smart Hydropower Solutions for Sustainable and Equitable Energy Access in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
2025-2027: PI, Leverhulme Trust.
2024-2032: Co-I, UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training in AI for the Environment (Intelligent Earth).
2021-2025: PI, UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship (FLF), The Dynamic Drivers of Flood Risk (DRIFT).
2021-2026: Co-I, NERC Large Grant, The Evolution of Global Flood Hazard and Risk (EvoFlood).
2019-2022: PI, John Fell Fund, Understanding river behaviour to better predict future flooding.
2018-2019: Co-I, NERC/ESRC Innovation grant, Financial planning for flood risk.

Postdoctoral Researchers

Dr Yuan Liu (2025-2028)
Dr Xueying Li (2025-2027)
Dr Sarah Wilson-Kemsley (2025-2027)
Dr Shaozhen Liu (2025-2027)
Dr Boen Zhang (2023-2026)
Dr Yinxue Liu (2022-2024)
Dr Simon Moulds (2021-2023)
Dr Michel Wortmann (2021-2023)
Dr Shasha Han (2020-2021)
Dr Laurent Courty (2018-2019)

Visiting Researchers

Mr Hancheng Ren (2026)
Ms Liangyi Wang (2025-2026)
Dr Qimin Deng (2024-2025)
Mr Liangkun Deng (2023-2024)
Dr Chunlin Li (2024-2025)
Dr Andrew Schepen (2024)
Dr Xihui Gu (2021-2023)
Dr Jiabo Yin (2022-2024)
Dr Fatih Tosunoglu (2022-2023)
Ms Xueying Li (2022-2023)
Mr Keke Fan (2020-2021)
Mr Wei Sha (2020-2021)

Teaching and Supervision

Professor Slater contributes to doctoral training through the University of Oxford's Centre for Doctoral Training in AI for the Environment, Intelligent Earth, where she co-leads the Natural Hazards module.

She was Academic Director of the MSc in Water Science, Policy and Management in 2024-2025 and has previously taught and developed courses in hydroclimatology, geographic data science and physical geography.

She welcomes enquiries from prospective doctoral and postdoctoral researchers working on flood science, river science, streamflow forecasting and prediction, fluvial geomorphology, and computational and machine-learning approaches in hydroclimatology.

Current Graduate Research Students

Satyam Mohla	Title tbc
Bikem Pastine	From Heat Exposure to Health Outcomes: Modelling Human Responses to Extreme Temperatures
Yuanhao Zhang	Unravelling Urban Impacts on Extreme Precipitation: An AI-Based Approach
Jowan Fromentin	Forecasting mortality from extreme heat events using graph machine learning
Emma Ford (Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics)	Atmospheric Patterns Triggering Extreme Flood Events Across the UK
Ana Silva Tavares	Explainable Neural Networks for Subseasonal Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Forecasting

Former Graduate Research Students

Bailey Anderson	Large sample statistical estimation of streamflow sensitivity to climate and land cover change
Marcus Buechel	Modelling the influence of widespread afforestation on UK hydrology
Katie Kowal	Leveraging Drought Prediction for Enhanced Preparedness in the Central American Dry Corridor
Jiajun Li	Exploring uncertainty in stage-discharge rating curves.
Timo Kelder	Using large climate model ensembles to quantify and explain climate extremes.