Helena Sykes
Natural Resources Wales
Welsh Crucible 2018
Helena gained an undergraduate degree in Geography from the University of Oxford, an MSc in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) from the University of Leeds and a PhD from Swansea University. She has worked in Environmental Reporting for Natural Resources Wales (NRW), and previously the Environment Agency, for nine years. Helena was promoted to Senior Remote Sensing Specialist in NRW, in August 2018.
Helena uses remote sensing and GIS methods across NRW’s wide remit in areas such as water quality, social justice statistics and incident response and contributes to wider government initiatives such as Welsh Government’s Living Wales programme and Defra’s Earth Observation Centre of Excellence.
Helena took a ten-month career break at the University of Southampton in 2015-2016, mostly teaching on their MSc in Applied GIS and Remote Sensing. She is interested in joining up academia and government, interdisciplinary collaboration and developing innovative methods to minimise the costs of actions beneficial to the people and environment of Wales.