Cervest bolsters international team, hiring Laura Zamboni, PhD, expert in climate science

The past few months have served as a wake-up call to people, governments and businesses to strengthen their supply chains and engage with climate experts, and the technology they have built, on how to mitigate risk and build security.

For organisations to take necessary actions to create resilience for their assets and the planet, they need access to decision-targeted information on their exposure to climate risk. We’re dedicated to providing organisations globally with just that. By investing in our international team, hiring some of the brightest scientists, engineers and climate experts, we’re closer to achieving our mission.

We’re thrilled to welcome Laura Zamboni as our Climate Scientist, the latest addition to our growing international team here at Cervest. Laura is an expert in climate science with over 10 years of academic experience working in data analysis, numerical climate simulations, extreme events, and more.

Her outstanding skill set is perfectly aligned with our aim to provide a pioneering Earth Science AI platform, close the climate knowledge gap and help protect and preserve the planet’s assets.

Earlier this year, we began work with our first FTSE250 customer and were selected to be just one of two UK companies to join Google’s Accelerator on the Sustainable Development Goals.

Laura joins at a pivotal time for us, as we ramp up activity for kicking off our Series A funding and, taking the invaluable insight from Google teams and other experts, continue working towards the 2021 goal of having mapped 1bn assets on our platform. Bringing Laura onto the team is a further step in our accelerated scaling and our drive to invest in the climate skills needed to bolster global climate security.

Laura completed her PhD in Environmental Fluid Mechanics at the University of Trieste and holds a MS in Physics. Her academic work specialised in climate modeling and in identifying physical mechanisms related to the occurrence of rainfall, with time horizons from seasons to decades into the future . She also has extensive experience in the US, having lectured at The University of Chicago on the science of sustainability and climate change, designing and performing climate simulations on one of the world’s fastest supercomputers at the Argonne National Laboratory, as well as managing projects for the US Department of Energy. Laura believes that:

“Climate volatility is a complex and ongoing challenge. There isn’t an existing solution and it isn’t possible for anyone to say with 100% accuracy what will happen in the future. But we use science to constrain and characterize such uncertainty, hence reducing the impact of climate volatility. By constantly gathering and distilling existing climate information and adding our own modeling, we build solutions and provide the insights organisations need to make better decisions locally, to help manage their assets and safeguard their future”.

As part of the team, Laura will be focused on building and collating climate knowledge, ensuring the organisation is at the very cutting edge of scientific discovery and building mathematical models to quantify impacts.

“I’m thrilled to be joining Cervest at this crucial time for the business. Being part of the team is much more than a job—I’m working for everyone on the planet.”

Laura will translate and analyse billions of data points from a vast array of satellites, sensors, climate simulations and more to create digestible forecasts for physical assets across the world. By fusing rigorous science, advanced AI and comprehensive scaling, Laura’s work alongside the wider team will help close the climate knowledge gap and give every stakeholder the information they need to take actions to tackle climate challenges.

Joining in the midst of a pandemic, Laura’s onboarding marks a shift in how we go about hiring at Cervest. Our London-based team has been international from the start, however, following the pandemic we moved swiftly to fully remote working, freeing our teams up to return to home countries and be with loved ones should they wish.

In the months since, we’ve made the call to no longer require new hires to be permanently based in the UK. Opening up our roles means we can find the highly-specialised talent we need, while bolstering our commitments to diversity and inclusion. Our CEO and founder, Iggy Bassi, recently spoke to Business Insider on just how important opening up the talent search was to finding the skills Cervest needs.

As such, Laura joins us from Italy and will collaborate digitally with the team. Our current and future roles will also be open to remote workers.

“Onboarding in the midst of a pandemic was thrilling and unusual! But the process has been seamless, and it’s great to be able to take on this role that previously wouldn’t have been within reach, due to my personal life choices. It’s a joy to leverage on my remote-working experience, which has been my norm within former academic roles, within a multidisciplinary team committed to sourcing global scientific talent, and which empowers workers to contribute from remote locations,” concluded Laura.

Investing in, supporting and collaborating with the scientific community, regardless of location will be absolutely key to building and delivering our Earth Science AI and protecting the planet and its assets.