Our People
and History

Home > About NCEO

Our People

At any one time, NCEO has a defined cadre of between 130 and 150  specific staff and students who work in long-term strategic and project-related research, expert data and software support or all-important operational support, technical and training roles.

All our staff are based at host institutions (the NCEO Partnership)  who are their legal employees. Each of our roles is essential to the organisation, we value all our people and work with them and our NCEO institutions to support long-term careers.  

The NCEO Institutions are based at various places around the UK including :

  • University of Leicester 
  • University of Reading 
  • University of Edinburgh 
  • University of Leeds
  • London — Imperial College London, King’s College London, University College London 
  • University of Sheffield
  • Plymouth Marine Laboratory
  • University of Oxford
  • RAL Space – Harwell
  • UKCEH – Wallingford

You can view the different locations here. The NCEO headquarters is based at Space Park Leicester, University of Leicester.  

We also work closely with space agencies to deliver critical observations of the Earth. As well as excellent research, our work supports public policy and commercial enterprises. 

Our History

NCEO was founded in 2008 through funding provided by Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), to become the Earth Observation Centre of Excellence. It was given the responsibility of the other smaller centres with an objective to drive national, strategic activities. New long-term international initiatives with UK membership were developed at the same time including the Copernicus system of satellites and the European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative.

In 2013, NERC established NCEO’s remit as Earth Observations for Earth System science and processes. NCEO is now one of NERC’s 6 main research centres and a research institute of the United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI). It supports UK government through the UK National Space Strategy and Earth Observations for national public good.

Learn about our history over the last 15 years

Our Values and Social responsibility

We are committed to promoting responsible research and innovation practices in step with NERC and its parent body United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI). NCEO staff are expected to be responsible and accountable.

NCEO are dedicated to promoting social responsibility across all NCEO locations and all areas of our research and operations.

FIND OUT MORE