Sarah Addezio named Programme Delivery Director for UK collections digitisation

Sarah Addezio. Photo: Jon Aitken.

LONDON.— Sarah Addezio has been appointed as Programme Delivery Director for DiSSCo UK at the Natural History Museum bringing experience of leading complex, multi-partner programmes to support delivery of this ambitious national initiative

· DiSSCo UK is a £155 million, 10-year programme to digitise the UK’s natural science collections

· DiSSCo UK is led by the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Natural History Museum and involves partners from across the UK, with hubs in Scotland, Wales and the West, and central England

· Digitised specimens are being used to model species’ responses to climate change, food security, preventing zoonotic diseases in humans, and to measure the impact of deep sea mining

· Artificial intelligence will unlock new ways of learning from collections data

· UK natural science collections hold more than 140 million biological and geological specimens, from animals and plants to minerals and meteorites, spanning an incredible 4.6-billion-year history.

The Natural History Museum (NHM) has recently appointed Sarah Addezio as Programme Delivery Director for DiSSCo UK, £155 million, 10-year programme to digitise natural science collections held in the UK. Funded through the UKRI Infrastructure Fund, DiSSCo UK is delivered by the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council and the NHM and involves 100 partners across the UK.

Sarah brings extensive experience leading complex, multi-partner programmes across the UK research and innovation landscape, including nationally significant initiatives spanning digital transformation, innovation and technology delivery. She joins DiSSCo UK as the programme moves from mobilisation into large-scale delivery, where her experience of building partnerships and delivering complex programmes across government, academia and industry will support its next phase as well as collaboration across the UK natural science collections community.

Sarah said, “I’m delighted to be joining the Natural History Museum at such an exciting point in the programme’s journey and look forward to building on the excellent work already underway, working with partners across the UK and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to realise the full ambition of this pioneering national programme. DiSSCo UK brings together an extraordinary partnership with a shared vision and ambition to transform how the UK’s natural science collections are accessed and used. The opportunity now is to expand and connect our digital capabilities so that collections generate new insights, accelerate research and create even greater value for science and society.”

The UK’s biological and geological collections are among the world’s most geographically, historically and scientifically important, but traditionally have been hard to access. DiSSCo UK addresses this challenge, enabling the digitisation of the natural history collections across the UK. The uses and values of collections like these are unparalleled, and digitised specimens are already being used to model species’ responses to climate change, identify future biodiversity and carbon risks, assess vulnerability in globally significant ecosystems, and to measure the impacts of deep sea mining.

Working with the AHRC to digitise these collections creates a vast, and freely available, dataset for the next generation of global environmental scientists to address ecological challenges. By digitising and connecting collections, the programme will create a foundational data infrastructure for the UK, designed to work with artificial intelligence to unlock new ways of learning from collections data.

Museum Director, Dr Doug Gurr said, “We are delighted to welcome Sarah to the Museum at this pivotal moment for DiSSCo UK. The programme represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform access to the UK's extraordinary natural science collections, unlocking their potential to drive scientific discovery and inform solutions to the planetary emergency. Sarah's experience in delivering complex, collaborative programmes will be instrumental as we work with partners across the UK to realise this ambitious vision and ensure our collections continue to generate knowledge and impact for decades to come."

Publications citing UK specimen data are steadily increasing, with 2,234 published during 2025, highlighting the impact of UK records on global science and the transformative potential of DiSSCo UK in unlocking the data held within the UK’s collections. Together, these collections provide evidence not only of biodiversity change, species distributions and ecological responses, but also of Earth history, past environments, mineral resources and planetary processes.

Recently the DiSSCo UK Year 0 Science Review provided a snapshot of how digitised UK natural science collections are already being used, including the following research,

· Protecting wild species closely related to cereal crops will safeguard valuable traits and facilitate future crop resilience and food security

· Spatial modelling of the vector Aedes aegypti (mosquito) estimates almost half of the world’s population could be at risk of Zika virus in the future, requiring mitigation measures to prevent increased transmission

· Climate change risks disrupting the synchrony between key butterfly life stages and the productivity of their plant hosts, limiting population growth

· UK researchers assessed the persistence and ecological recovery of seabed mining impacts decades after disturbance

· Rising temperatures will alter Sphagnum moss distribution, impacting peatland formation and carbon storage.

· Digitising historic deep‑sea sediment collections, unlocking long‑term records of ocean conditions, providing crucial insight into Earth system change and strengthening our understanding of climate impacts over time.

DiSSCo UK is funded through the UKRI Infrastructure Fund and delivered by AHRC. As part of its mission to advance knowledge, improve lives and drive growth, UKRI invests in world-class facilities, equipment, and resources that are essential for researchers and innovators to do ground-breaking work. This infrastructure underpins the UK’s position as a science superpower and innovation nation.