Dr. Kelly Widdicks

Kelly's research interests focus on the responsible design and development of digital research infrastructure for environmental science, taking a systems thinking approach that considers the wider societal and environmental impacts that digital technology can create.

With her background in Computer Science and Human-Computer Interaction, she embeds co-design research activities into her work to ensure that digital research infrastructure meets a variety of stakeholder needs across disciplines including environmental data scientists, data managers, software engineers, academic researchers, and policymakers. She is particularly interested in understanding these stakeholders' needs to support collaborative environmental science that is transparent about uncertainty and decisions, and is a Theme Lead for the 'decision-making under uncertainty' theme in CEEDS.

Her research also involves investigating opportunities to reduce the environmental impacts of digital research infrastructure, building on her prior work with colleagues on the climate impacts of digital technologies. As part of this, she is a co-investigator on the EPSRC PARIS-DE project focusing on developing a framework for the sustainable and responsible innovation of digital technology, and leads research on sustainable digital research infrastructure for UKCEH's Digital Strategy.

Selected Publications

Widdicks, K., Lucivero, F., Samuel, G., Croxatto, L.S., Smith, M.T., Ten Holter, C., Berners-Lee, M., Blair, G.S., Jirotka, M., Knowles, B., Sorrell, S., Börjesson Rivera, M., Cook, C., Coroamă, V.C., Foxon, T.J., Hardy, J., Hilty, L.M., Hinterholzer, S., and Penzenstadler, B., 2023. Systems thinking and efficiency under emissions constraints: Addressing rebound effects in digital innovation and policy. Patterns, 4(2).

Freitag, C., Berners-Lee, M., Widdicks, K., Knowles, B., Blair, G.S. and Friday, A., 2021. The real climate and transformative impact of ICT: A critique of estimates, trends, and regulations. Patterns, 2(9), p.100340.