Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal visits the People and Nature Lab at UCL East

The Faculty of Life Sciences was honoured to welcome Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal to the People and Nature Lab at One Pool Street, UCL East on February 20, 2025. As Chancellor of the University of London, of which UCL is a constituent college, The Princess Royal’s visit highlighted the cutting-edge, interdisciplinary research and training in life sciences at UCL East.

After a tour of UCL East’s Marshgate Building, hosted by Prof Paola Lettieri, UCL Vice-Provost (Strategy), Her Royal Highness was guided through the People and Nature Lab by Profs Gail Taylor and Kate Jones. The visit showcased the extensive research and training at the new centre, with interactions between The Princess, students and researchers.

Prof Gail Taylor, Dean of the Faculty of Life Sciences, provided an overview of the Faculty’s mission to tackle critical challenges, including climate change, water and food security, and biodiversity loss. The People and Nature Lab is pivotal in training the next generation of thought leaders and practitioners to be at the cutting edge of solutions for a sustainable future. Prof Kate Jones, Director of the People and Nature Lab and Professor of Ecology and Biodiversity, introduced the world-leading interdisciplinary research and teaching initiatives aimed at fostering sustainable relationships between natural systems, human health and wellbeing.

Prof Gail Taylor said: “The visit of The Princess RoyaI was a wonderful opportunity to showcase our research and teaching in the People and Nature Laboratory at UCL.  We were able to demonstrate potential solutions for a sustainable future, using technologies such as sensing, alongside data and AI, all of which are likely to be important in addressing the planetary crises of climate change declining biodiversity and increasing pollution.”

During the tour, The Princess Royal explored cutting-edge technologies in ecology. She visited the People and Nature Lab Garden, a living lab featuring stations with AI-based automatic acoustic sensors for bats and birds, IoT weather stations, a wasp nest sensing system, and a camera trap showcase. Dr Joanne Littlefair, UKRI Future Leaders Fellow, described innovative air-based environmental DNA monitoring approaches which are enabling new ways of quantifying biodiversity.

Prof Kate Jones said: “We all depend on the natural environment for our health, wellbeing, and survival. Understanding how to better care for our planet is critical, not just for preserving nature but also for maintaining food security, adapting to climate change and preventing the next pandemic. Her Royal Highness’s interest in our work is really timely and we encourage more people to get involved as students, researchers, or citizen scientists, as we collaborate across disciplines to understand how the degradation of nature impacts us all, and to develop solutions for the future.”

The visit also highlighted the centre’s collaborations across UCL Faculties and beyond. The Princess was introduced to the Virtual Garden Lab, an interactive digital twin of the People and Nature Lab Garden. Prof Duncan Wilson, Professor of Connected Environments in the Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, described the importance of emerging digital twin technologies to interact and better understand the environment. The Princess also discussed challenges to coral reef survival and restoration, and was shown virtual reconstructions of real-world coral, an innovative collaboration between marine biologists Ben Williams and Dr Jason Lynch and architects at Datascape Realities.

In addition to the People and Nature Lab Garden, the centre has a living lab on its doorstep – the Olympic Park and river – and actively involve the local community in their research. Dr Izzy Bishop, Lecturer in Ecology, detailed a citizen science project for river water monitoring, led by Thames21 and local community groups, to which Her Royal Highness contributed a data set.

Prof Elli Leadbeater, Professor of Ecosystems and Biodiversity Research, introduced Pool Street East, an exciting new development which will be home to a pollinator laboratory, vertical farms, greenhouses, and labs for the UCL Institute for Materials Discovery. The space will also host opportunities for community engagement.

A further goal of the People and Nature Lab is to design and deliver nature-friendly and climate-resilient built environments. Dr Dean Bell described a “tree-pit”, which enables the integration of mature trees into cities.

The final part of the visit focused on the People and Nature Lab’s training programmes in Ecology, AI, Data Science, Urban Engineering, Climate Change and Health including AI-Intervene – a new PhD training programme applying AI for solving real-world ecological challenges, introduced by Dr Dan Maynard. The Princess Royal met with current and former students to learn about their experiences.

The event concluded with a plaque unveiling ceremony, where PhD student Santiago Martinez Balvanera presented Her Royal Highness with the gift of a camera trap.

Links:

• UCL News article
• People and Nature Lab
• Virtual Garden Lab
• Biodiversity, a UCL priority
• UCL East Campus

Image caption: PhD student Dongyi Ma (UCL Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis) shows Her Royal Highness a weather sensor in the UCL People and Nature Lab Garden.

Image credit: Credit: UCL/Andrew Parsons/Parsons Media