Growing up in Greece, wildfires were a constant presence each summer. In 2007, I remember watching TV footage of fires ravaging the Peloponnese peninsula and island of Evia, destroying forests and homes, taking lives. The sight of helicopters and firefighting aircraft crossing the smoky skies was both terrifying and awe-inspiring.

Then when I was 17, flames crept dangerously close to my home in Kavala, northern Greece. I recall standing outside with water-hose in hand, scanning the horizon and hoping our nearby treeless street would stop the fire’s advance. Thankfully, firefighting aircraft reached the area just in time – but the feeling of vulnerability at seeing how easily entire landscapes could be consumed stayed with me.

Those experiences shaped my curiosity about how people could better respond to such disasters. Wildfires are becoming more intense, frequent and harder to manage worldwide as fire seasons become longer, affecting communities from California to Australia.

According to the UN environment programme, longer droughts, heatwaves, and erratic winds are pushing ecosystems past their natural limits, endangering both human lives and biodiversity. Nasa reports that extreme wildfire activity has more than doubled worldwide over the past two decades.

In 2018, Greece suffered the deadliest wildfires in its modern history when fires in the southern seaside town of Mati and in the general Attica region claimed over 100 lives. The devastation renewed my determination to find better ways to combat fires.

The following year, while doing a master’s degree in robotics at the University of Bristol, I joined a

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