Federico Botta

Federico Botta

Senior Lecturer in Data Science, University of Exeter. Urban analytics, human mobility, and data science for policy.

I use data science and AI to understand how cities work — and to help make them fairer, greener, and better served. My research spans urban analytics, human mobility, and computational social science, with a deliberate focus on turning research into real-world policy impact.

Published in Nature Human Behaviour · covered by the BBC, Science and Wired in 15+ countries · evidence to UK Parliament and government departments.

Urban Analytics Human Mobility Data Science for Policy AI & Society

What I Work On

🏙️ Urban Analytics

Understanding how cities function through mobile phone data, social media, and other digital traces — from crowd size estimation to urban vibrancy to access to greenspace.

🚌 Transport & Mobility

Analysing patterns of human movement to understand inequality in access to transport, the affordability of public transit, and how COVID-19 restructured people's mobility.

📊 Data Science for Policy

Bridging cutting-edge research and government decision-making — providing evidence to Parliament and co-designing research with teams at the Department for Transport, ONS, and 10 Downing Street.

🤖 AI & Society

Exploring how AI and large-scale data can be used responsibly and equitably, while addressing questions of bias, access, and public trust in data-driven systems.

Impact in Numbers

0 peer-reviewed publications
0 £M+ in research grants
0 Parliamentary Select Committees
0 PhD students supervised
0 countries with media coverage
0 postdoctoral researchers

Recent Highlights

  • 2025 — Appointed Programme Lead for Exeter’s new MSc in AI for the Environment
  • 2025 — New research on healthcare access inequalities (Journal of Physics: Complexity) and rail journey costs (Environment and Planning B)
  • 2024 — General Chair of the Conference on Complex Systems (CCS2024), the world’s flagship conference in complex systems science
  • 2024 — Gave oral evidence to the Transport Select Committee on the future of transport data
  • 2024 — Appointed Deputy Director of Education (PGT) at Exeter
  • 2023 — Published in Nature Human Behaviour on how COVID-19 restructured human mobility across space and time
  • 2021–2023 — ESRC No. 10 Data Science Fellow, embedded with the data science team at 10 Downing Street and the ONS Data Science Campus

Working with Partners

I actively seek collaborations with organisations outside academia — particularly in government, the public sector, and mission-driven industry. If you are working on challenges involving transport, cities, data, or AI and want to explore a research partnership, I welcome a conversation. Previous partners include: Department for Transport · Office for National Statistics · 10 Downing Street Data Science Team · Natural England · DEFRA · Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office · LV= / Allianz Insurance · City Science

Get in touch   View my research   Policy & impact

Current Projects

I am currently involved in a number of funded research projects in collaboration with government and industry partners, focusing on transport equity, urban environments, AI applications, and access to natural spaces. I also have an ongoing knowledge exchange project with the Royal Albert Memorial Museum (RAMM) in Exeter, using data science to better understand and predict visitor patterns.