Sarah L Dance

Professor Sarah L Dance is a Professor of Data Assimilation and EPSRC Senior Fellow in Digital Technology for Living With Environmental Change at the University of Reading's Department of Mathematics and Statistics, part of the School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences. She leads the Data Assimilation Research Centre (DARC) and focuses on advancing data assimilation techniques in weather forecasting, hydrology, and environmental monitoring. Her work integrates cutting-edge computational methods with real-world applications, particularly in improving flood prediction and soil moisture estimation through innovative modeling approaches.

Her research interests span data assimilation algorithms, remote sensing applications, and numerical modeling of environmental systems. Recent work emphasizes the use of satellite data, radar observations, and deep learning for environmental monitoring and disaster management. She collaborates extensively with international institutions on projects like Hydro-JULES and the Transatlantic Data Science Academy, advancing both theoretical and applied aspects of environmental data science.

Professor Dance has contributed to operational systems such as the Met Office's data assimilation frameworks and has pioneered methods to handle observation uncertainty in high-resolution models. Her projects often bridge academia and industry, addressing challenges in flood forecasting, climate modeling, and sensor data integration.