Katerina Michaelides is a Associate Professor in the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol, the co-lead of the Water Theme of the Cabot Institute for the Environment, and an Associate Researcher in the Earth Research Institute at University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB). She received her PhD in Hydrology of Arid Environments from King’s College London in 2000. She comes from the Mediterranean island of Cyprus.

Her research focuses primarily on processes in dryland environments from a theoretical and applied perspective. This includes research on dryland hydro-climatology, Earth surface processes, and desertification dynamics. For the last 10 years she has been working on understanding why and how dryland fluvial environments differ from their humid counterparts. She leads a multidisciplinary research programme focused on droughts and land degradation in East African drylands of Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia. This research has a strong international development focus and involves the creation of novel tools (including models and mobile phone apps) to aid rural communities in adapting to droughts and future climate change.

Katerina has been awarded research grants from many funders including the UKRI Global Challenges Research Fund, the Royal Society, the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), and the EU Horizon 2020 program.

On DOWN2EARTH, Katerina will serve as the overall UoB PI and oversee analysis of climate/water data analysis and app development, while also contributing to various other aspects of the project.