I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and the School of the Environment at the University of Toronto, where I study how societies produce and use information about climate change and disaster — and how those systems could work better.

My research combines ethnographic, participatory, and design methods, and runs from severe weather risk communication to the equity assumptions built into disaster risk models. I lead the Toronto Climate Observatory, which develops climate informatics for the Greater Toronto Area alongside municipal governments and community organizations.

I also hold a cross-appointment to the Faculty of Information, and am a Faculty Affiliate at the School of Cities and the Data Sciences Institute.

My work is supported by NSERC, SSHRC, NSF, NOAA, the World Bank, and the Natural Hazards Center.

Some recent publications include:

A full list is available on my Google Scholar profile.

I have a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Colorado Boulder, a Master's degree in Natural Resources and Sustainable Development from American University and Bachelor's degrees in History and Political Science from the University of Illinois, Chicago.

Prior to starting my PhD, I was a researcher at the The Center for Neighborhood Technology and the World Resources Institute, a software developer at Development Seed, and a consultant to the World Bank’s Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR). At GFDRR I launched the Open Data for Resilience Initiative, a worldwide effort to harness open data, open source software, and civic technology to improve disaster and climate risk management. I am also a co-founder and former board member of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, an international organization working towards creating a free and open map of the world for humanitarian and development purposes.

While a PhD student at CU Boulder, I was also a visiting student researcher with University of California, Berkeley's Center for Science, Technology, Medicine, and Society, and a visiting researcher and lecturer with the Stanford Urban Resilience Initiative.

Online:

Contact:

soden@cs.toronto.edu

Updates

  • June 2026 - I served as Co-General Chair of the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT 2026), held June 25-28 in Montréal.
  • May 2026 - I was awarded a $465,062 SSHRC Insight Grant for Sustaining the Map: A Mixed-Methods Intervention for OpenStreetMap Contributor Retention.
  • April 2026 - Our group presented five papers at CHI 2026 in Barcelona, including Reflections Towards an Ecology of Internet Connectivity, which received a Best Paper Honourable Mention.
  • February 2026 - I led the first Toronto Climate Data Summit.
  • October 2025 - We co-hosted the Ontario Climate Summit and published the Ontario Climate Risk Workshop Report with the Waterloo Climate Institute.
  • August 2025 - I was awarded a $60,000 University of Toronto XSeed Fund grant to measure the impacts of major flooding events on communities and infrastructure in the Greater Toronto Area.
  • Summer 2025 - We ran the second Toronto Climate Summer School, a six-week intensive course combining lectures, field visits and supervised research on climate change in the GTA.
  • June 2025 - Stephen Kibsey and I wrote an op-ed in Canada's National Observer on why Toronto financial institutions must do more to advance the energy transition.
  • June 2025 - I received the University of Toronto Dean's Excellence Award.
  • September 2024 - The Toronto Climate Observatory convened over 100 climate researchers, practitioners and government staff from across the region.