Isabel Rushby

Isabel is a scientist contributing to the delivery of consultancy services to industry with a particular focus in the water and energy sectors.

Areas of expertise

  • Statistical modelling
  • Water
  • Energy

Current activities

Since joining the Met Office Isabel has worked on a range of projects applying statistical models to help enable customers to understand the impact of weather and climate on their operations.  This includes work on statistical demand modelling for the water sector, focussing on the influence of weather on water usage patterns of households, the effects of COVID-19, and resilience planning. Isabel has also worked with the energy sector on the identification of adverse weather scenarios to test the resilience of a future highly renewable energy system.

Career background

Isabel joined the Met Office in June 2020 after graduating from the University of Manchester with a first class MMath in Mathematics. Her final Masters project involved using image segmentation techniques to detect stationary precipitation from radar data which could be used for short term forecasts of flash flooding. She spent the third year of her degree at the University of California Santa Barbara where she studied a variety of statistical and machine learning techniques. Isabel is a fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and was awarded a prize for her presentation at the Royal Meteorological Society’s Student and Early Career Scientist Conference in 2021.