Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Life Scientific.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4.

I'm Jim Alleili and my mission is to interview

the most fascinating and important scientists alive today and to find out what makes them tick.

Barely a month goes by without news of another catastrophic flood somewhere in the world,

and the worst events stay with us like the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004

or the flooding of New Orleans with Hurricane Katrina a year later and the role of climate change is often mooted. Here in the UK

this winter flood victims were once again caught in a cycle of despair and anger

as they try to make sense of why their homes were flooded and what could be done to prevent this happening again.

It's real world problems like this that preoccupy my guest today.

Environmental scientist, Professor Carolyn Roberts,

likes to puzzle stuff out, she says,

applying environmental science, water science, in particular,

to work out why such events occur,

and the role we humans play in them.

Today, Carolyn's main focus is coming up with sustainable technologies to help address these

problems.

She works as a specialist at the Knowledge Transfer Network, a government-funded agency set up to drive innovation

forward.

That passion for problem-solving in water replaces, I mentioned, also takes her into the

intriguing world of forensics where she

assists the police when bodies are found floating in rivers and canals.

...