Future Leaders Fellow

University of Edinburgh

Dr Anne Templeton is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Social Psychology at the University of Edinburgh. She leads the Identities and Collective Behaviour research group. Her research primarily focuses on using the social identity approach to improve crowd safety in emergencies and at mass events. Anne does this through exploring the role of social identities in communication between crowd members and safety personnel, and incorporating the role of social identities into pedestrian models of collective behaviour. Anne has either conducted research or advised on crowd safety for the UK Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, UK Sport, the Sports Grounds Safety Authority, the UK Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Local Communities, the Hajj, PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games, Rail Safety and Standards Boards, Local Authority Building Control, and the Cabinet Office.

Projects: All of the exciting research shown on the website

External Collaborator

UK Health Security Agency

Dr Holly Carter is a Principal Behavioural Scientist in the Behavioural Science and Insights Unit at the UK Health Security Agency. She completed a PhD in crowd behaviour during CBRN incidents and is interested in understanding the psychosocial aspects of mass emergencies and disasters. Her research explores various aspects of emergency preparedness and response, including the impact of pre-incident information on public preparedness, factors which affect the way in which members of the public respond to recommendations and interventions implemented by the authorities, and ways to improve interoperable working among emergency responders. Holly works closely with policy makers and emergency planners to inform policy and practice for the management of major incidents, particularly those involving CBRN agents. Her work has informed the development of training modules for the Fire and Rescue Service and other emergency response organisations, and she provides advice to a number of central Government working groups.

Clinical Senior Lecturer

University of Edinburgh

Gareth leads the Resuscitation Research Group (RRG). He also works as an Honorary Consultant in Emergency Medicine at the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh and Associate Medical Director for the Scottish Ambulance Service. RRG research interests include the management of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, non-technical skills in time critical resuscitation, and the national implementation of the ‘Chain of Survival’ through Scotland’s strategy for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. The group is the home of the national ‘Save a Life for Scotland’ partnership and the ‘Language of Resuscitation’ social sciences collaboration.

Co-Investigator

University of Greenwich

Steve is Professor of Evacuation and Pedestrian Dynamics at University of Greenwich (UK) and Visiting Professor of Evacuation and Pedestrian Dynamics at Lund University (Sweden). Steve has nearly 30 years of experience in pedestrian dynamics, human behaviour in fire and evacuation modelling. Steve has worked for the Canadian /US governments (e.g. National Research Council Canada), academic institutes (current on the adjunct faculty of Univ. Maryland (US) and Memorial Univ. (Canada)) and in consultancy (e.g. Hughes Associates (US), Movement Strategies (UK), etc.). Steve has been involved in data collection, model development/application, procedural design, and regulatory development. Steve has worked in the aviation, maritime, rail and built environments, and has also worked in large-scale disasters (e.g. wildfire incidents).

Co-Investigator

University of Greenwich

Aoife is a professor at the University of Greenwich, serving on the leadership team for M34Impact, an ambitious new project which brings together and expands world-leading research from the Centre for Safety, Resilience and Protective Security (CSRPS) and the Computational Science and Engineering Group (CSEG). Aoife’s focus is on business development and partnership activity for the project, and on driving new high-impact research and innovation to fast-track growth in multi-disciplinary and multi-scale modelling expertise.

Aoife is also a leading specialist with 15 years’ experience in people movement, crowd dynamics and emergency evacuation strategies. Aoife has led high profile projects across the globe, advising on all aspects of people movement and behaviour in buildings, hospitals, stadia and events, the public realm, and transport systems. She leads research projects to advance the safety and security of crowded places, specialising in human behaviour in emergencies and pedestrian movement through security overlays, including through hostile vehicle mitigation (HVM) barriers, and search and screening checkpoints. She is a specialist in designing CCTV studies of human behaviour and led the world’s largest study into virus transmission risk behaviours in crowded places during the COVID-19 pandemic.

External Collaborator

Munich University of Applied Sciences

Prof. Dr. Gerta Köster is a Professor of modelling and simulation at the Department of Computer Science and Mathematics, Hochschule München – University of Applied Sciences. Previously she was a researcher at the Department of Mathematics, LMU München and Research and Teaching assistant at the Department of Mathematics at The Ohio State University, USA. She gained expertise in applying science and managing innovation during 13 years in industry. Her current research focus is on modelling and simulation of pedestrian dynamics, including psychological phenomena, and in harnessing explainable AI methods to harvest and analyse massive data output from simulations and observations. Professor Köster is a Project Collaborator on the fellowship and provides vital input into the development of the computer model through her expertise in modelling group processes in Vadere.

Project Partner

Munich University of Applied Sciences

Dr. Christina Maria Mayr is an engineer with a PhD in computer science. Her doctoral research was supervised by Prof. Dr. Gerta Köster and Prof. Dr. Hans-Joachim Bungartz. Her research focuses on crowd management using mobile communication technologies. In her dissertation, she developed an app-based crowd guidance system to detect and prevent dangerous congestion at public transportation hubs. Her work is interdisciplinary, combining methods from engineering, computer science, and psychology. Dr. Mayr has expertise in software development and advises the project team on implementing new models in Vadere.

Co-Investigator

The University of St Andrews

Dr Fergus Neville’s research is focused on group processes and their pro-social and anti-social consequences. I am particularly interested in social identities, including within organisational contexts. My research covers a range of phenomena which are central to understandings of organisations and their management, including leadership and influence, normative processes, social support and toxic behaviour in groups. Much of my research has been conducted within crowds as I believe they represent a uniquely rich site in which to study processes of organisation, leadership and conflict. The core motivation running through my work is to produce outward-facing research which develops both theory and practical guidance for policy and impact.

Project Partner

University of Canterbury

Pete carries out research and development for computer modelling of crowd movement, both for experimental analysis and simulation with the model Simulex. He has 34 years experience developing computer models, across the fields of crowd movement, building information modelling, building physics modelling, cloud-based simulation tools, and also digital video processing for experiments. Prior to working at the university in New Zealand, he worked in software and model development at Integrated Environmental Solutions, Autodesk and GHD. He also serves as an adjunct lecturer at Lund University in Sweden, teaching on BIM and crowd movement modelling. Pete also contributes towards standards development through ISO Technical Committee 92/Working Group 11 (Fire Safety Engineering) and through buildingSmart International working groups on Occupant Movement analysis and Fire Safety Engineering.

Postdoctoral Research Associate

University of Edinburgh

Dr Yunhe Tong is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Edinburgh. He has an engineering and psychology background and has nearly five years of experience in crowd behaviour. His research focuses on how various attributes shape individual behaviour using well-controlled virtual reality experiments and how crowd dynamics emerge from individual interactions using mathematical and computational models.

External Collaborator

Munich University of Applied Sciences

Sophia Wagner is a PhD student at the Department of Computer Science and Mathematics at the Hochschule München – University of Applied Sciences. She focuses her research on modelling and simulating pedestrian crowds, particularly on the transmission of pathogens in moving crowds. In the summer of 2024, Sophia will participate in the first responder project as a visiting research student, where she intends to find synergies between the first responder project's objectives and her own research. If one has a way to mitigate infection risks, one still needs to communicate the necessary behaviours to the public in a way that encourages them to follow the guidance. She aims to bring in her expertise in the software Vadere, for computer-based modelling of group processes.

External Collaborator

University of Delft

Dr. Natalie Van der Wal is an Associate Professor in System Engineering and Simulation at Delft University of Technology. Previously she worked as a Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Research Fellow at Leeds University Business School and as an Assistant Professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Dr. van der Wal is an expert in agent-based modelling and simulation and cognitive and social psychology. She aims to improve evacuations with her interdisciplinary research, to ultimately save lives. Dr. Van der Wal has co-authored over 40 peer-reviewed journal and conference publications in the areas of agent-based modelling, evacuation science, resilience research, health and well-being. She has won the best paper award at the International Conference of Computational Collective Intelligence 2017 for her evacuation model including socio-cultural factors, an EU H2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship in 2018 for evacuation research, and was Work Package Leader of EU H2020 project IMPACT from 2015-2018.

Co-Investigator

University of Greenwich

Dr Hui Xie is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Greenwich and a member of both the Centre for Safety, Resilience and Protective Security (CSRPS) and the Computational Science and Engineering Group (CSEG). His recent research and consulting projects include building fire safety, large-scale disasters such as wildfires, and human behaviour at major events. Before joining the University of Greenwich recently, Dr Xie served as a Senior Advisor in the Advisory Consulting team at Movement Strategies, a GHD company, for three years. He brings 13 years of experience in evacuation modelling and the study of human behaviour. Throughout his career, he has contributed to several large-scale research and industrial projects, focusing on designing and conducting experimental trials, data collection and analysis, and modelling to better understand human behaviour during evacuations in built environments. Dr Xie's PhD research focused on wayfinding behaviour in emergency situations and the design of smart signage systems.

Project Administrator

University of Edinburgh

Anezka has over 14 years experience in various roles in the University of Edinburgh. She recently joined the group to manage the core administrative procedures for the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship project.

Project: UKRI FLF Project - ‘Simulating the impact of first responder communication strategies on citizen adherence in emergencies’

Research Assistant

University of Edinburgh

Em Bolton is a MSc student in the Social Psychology Programme at the University of Edinburgh. After receiving her undergraduate degree in Forensic Psychology, she moved focus to social psychology with particular interest in gender, power, and dangerous situations.  She has 3+ years’ experience working as a research assistant within an academic environment and has conducted research both virtually and in person. Em joined the team as a research assistant during the summer of 2024, where she is assisting with recruitment, preparation of study materials and set up, as well as execution of experiments with participants.

Research Assistant

University of Edinburgh

Julie Brattsti is a MSc student in the Social Psychology Programme at the University of Edinburgh. She has previously done research within social psychology, specifically on partner preferences and gender equality. Julie joined the team as a research assistant during the summer of 2024, where she is  assisting with recruitment, preparation of study materials and set up, as well as execution of experiments with participants.