Dr Catherine Rhodes is an academic project manager at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk.

Catherine manages several research projects relating to understanding, management and mitigation of existential and catastrophic risks and conducts research on the intersection of risks emerging from technologies and risks emerging from governance.

The achievement of many of the Sustainable Development Goals and the consequent impact on the lives of the world’s poorest 3 billion people will improve our ability to manage and mitigate these types of risk; in turn these risks (e.g. extreme climate change or nuclear winter scenarios) threaten progress in many of the areas that the Sustainable Development Goals are concerned with.

Catherine’s individual research interests cover interactions between and respective roles of science and governance in addressing major global challenges. Gaining understanding of this in order to provide realistic recommendations for improving technology governance underlies Catherine’s motivation to participate in Cambridge Global Challenges.