Academic Consultancy: Professor Gregor C. Leckebusch

University of Birmingham Enterprise plays a vital role in harnessing the University’s expertise not only to support its own ventures, but also by enabling academics to consult with industry. This approach builds networks, credibility, and impact for researchers while giving companies access to their knowledge. 

Professor Gregor C. Leckebusch, Professor of Meteorology and Climatology, has done impactful work with businesses on climate risk, including a global firm dedicated to the built environment, which wanted to assess how well railway and transport authorities were prepared for climate change.

Enterprise enabled them to engage Professor Leckebusch to review their plans. “We saw that they could benefit from additional perspectives and inputs, especially to make sure they weren’t excluding risks that might not seem relevant today but could become significant in the future,” Professor Leckebusch explains. “They appreciated our feedback, and it impacted what they submitted to the customer.”

The perspective of a climate scientist is crucial when evaluating preparedness and adaptation strategies. Some risks may seem absent today but are scientifically plausible in the future, such as a change in tropical cyclone occurrence in a region like the Arabian Peninsula. Climate expertise helps companies understand how current variability stresses infrastructure, systems, and people, while also highlighting how future hazards could cascade into wider impacts.

Hazards such as extreme heat, prolonged warm periods, shifting seasonal patterns, and water stress all carry implications not just for physical assets, but for staffing, operations, and decision-making processes. The uncertainty can be destabilising, but expert consultants help businesses frame and address it. “It’s about combining the scientific, methodological, climatological, and engineering aspects,” says Professor Leckebusch.

Globally, more companies are emerging to provide climate-related services, particularly around hazard and risk. Yet hazard risk remains under-addressed, especially in a transient climate where the past is no longer a reliable indication of the future. This gap also has implications for the catastrophe modelling methods that support financial risk and insurance calculations.

“Private companies are doing similar work that we did in scientific papers years ago, and it’s good to see how we can have an impact on decision making and make the science that we do count,” notes Professor Leckebusch. The UK government is also investing in research to improve climate forecasts, commissioning assessments and adaptation reports to identify the most pressing risks. Professor Leckebusch contributes to this work through Enterprise in collaboration with the Met Office.

Enterprise is instrumental in making these collaborations possible. “They handle all the paperwork and tax aspects, take on the associated risks, and cover the legal aspects, which allows us to focus fully on the work itself,” says Professor Leckebusch. “Compared to when I consulted independently in the past, Enterprise provides a higher level of security, which makes a big difference.” By providing this infrastructure, Enterprise enables academics to build commercial knowledge and credibility while ensuring their insights reach the necessary industry.

This model of consultancy is proving powerful for translating climate science into industry action. Scientists know the risks better than anyone, but companies have historically struggled to engage with the issue. Now, as climate urgency grows, Enterprise helps bridge the gap.