Michael Singer is Lead Principal Investigator on DOWN2EARTH. He is also Deputy Director of the Water Research Institute and Professor in the School of Earth & Environmental Sciences at Cardiff University, as well as Researcher in the Earth Research Institute at University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB). He received his PhD in Environmental Science and Management from UCSB in 2003. He is a Certified Professional Hydrologist American Institute of Hydrology.

His research is focused on the regional expression of climate and climate change at and near the Earth’s surface and its impact on process responses to environmental change (climatic and anthropogenic forcing), which is currently a great scientific challenge with societal relevance. Near-surface responses to environmental change are critical to predicting the consequences of climate and land-use changes at the landscape scale, as well as for management on human/engineering timescales. Singer is, at the core, a watershed scientist with a research aim to advance theory and reduce uncertainty about the impact of humans and climate on water resources, water balance, hydrologic fluxes, erosion/sedimentation, and topographic evolution of landscapes.

Michael has received research grants from many funders including the US National Science Foundation (NSF), the US Department of Defense’s Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP), The Nature Conservancy, the UK’s Global Challenges Research Fund and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme.