Keynote at the EU SUBMERSE Project Final Event — Copenhagen

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I was honoured to be invited as a keynote speaker at the SUBMERSE Project Final Event — The Future of Subsea Fibre Optic Sensing — held at the University of Copenhagen from 15 to 17 April 2026.

My talk, titled “Wired for wonder and warning: Utilising submarine cables for exploration and environmental resilience” was aimed at giving an overview of progress made on repurposing submarine telecommunication cables into large-scale environmental sensors for various applications from geophysics to ocean science.

Beyond my own contribution, attending the event was a great opportunity to take stock of everything colleagues in Europe have achieved over the past three years. Colleagues from 25 partner institutions shared results from fibre-sensing deployments in Norway, Portugal, Greece, and Italy, and the discussions ranged from the physics of deep-sea DAS to the governance frameworks needed to share data at scale. It was genuinely exciting to see so many groups converging on common challenges: data sharing protocols, interoperability between networks, and the path toward making fibre-sensing technology both widespread and genuinely useful for society.

The conversations around data exchange, open infrastructure, and what a coordinated European fibre-sensing capability could look like felt like real first steps toward something lasting. There is still much to build — but the foundations are being laid.

Many thanks to the SUBMERSE Consortium and to GÉANT for organising this event.

The full programme

SUBMERSE on Anthony Sladen's webpage

Keynote at the EU SUBMERSE Project Final Event — Copenhagen