SDG 13: Climate Action

Technologies for a healthy planet

Name	Area of research	Description
Eve Andrews	renewable energy circular economy offshore wind	Circular economy in offshore wind. Tools for renewable energy companies to select affordable steps towards a circular low carbon energy generation network.
Mohit Arora	circular economy urban sustainability low carbon construction engineering for development	Interested in the current state of resource efficiency in urban systems and industries, and develops technological and policy interventions for a low carbon future. Mohit has worked with several cities to improve their materials management towards a more circular economy. In low and middle income countries, he is focusing on engineering driven solutions to achieve low carbon development solutions for buildings and construction sector.
Benjamin Bach	data visualization data science public engagement	Working on data visualization and making data accessible and understandable by experts and non-experts. Data visualization is essential in understanding complex processes and data sets. Especially, techniques from storytelling and visual communication have huge potential to communicate findings and information to large and diverse audiences.
Liz Baggs	climate smart technologies agritechnology environmental change	Development of mitigation strategies for greenhouse gas emissions from agri-environment systems. This includes international partnerships, and with non-academic stakeholders, to enhance a circular nutrient economy that lowers reliance on inorganic fertilisers in smallholder farming systems.
Christopher Beckett	sustainable construction thermal performance housing resilience	Engineering behaviour of earth building materials and structures, aiming to improve their durability and design.
Nicholle Bell	environmental adaptation natural capital technologies for environmental monitoring	Applying advanced analytical technologies to understanding how peatlands, Earth's largest terrestrial carbon store, adapt to human activities and climate change. Many believe peatlands store carbon due to the antimicrobial properties of certain molecules, however until now our ability to 'see' inside peat has been hindered by the fact that peat is the most complex mixture on Earth.
Jenny Britton	climate change transformation organisational behaviour organisational change	Work on Executive Education, particularly with B-CCaS which provides a focal point for our efforts in supporting businesses adopt new practices.
Julio Bros-Williamson	digital twins & living labs climate change resilience healthy buildings	Interested in low embodied carbon materials and techniques in the built environment, energy-efficient technological solutions for the refurbishment of existing buildings, and climate change adaptation and resilience of buildings by developing solutions and low carbon building services.
Efthalia Chatzisymeon	environmental engineering water and wastewater treatment environmental sustainability	Development of sustainable technologies for water and wastewater treatment; life cycle assessment of environmental processes and technologies.
Christine Cooper	green washing policy making abuses of power	Interested in accounting technologies and how these strongly impact upon the majority of decisions made in organisations and government.
Maria Grazia De Angelis	environmental protection biomedical applications clean energy sustainable materials	Membranes for greenhouse gas emission reduction, sustainable materials for packaging and other applications, and development of low water, accessible and inclusive hemodialysis processes.
Simone Dimartino	bioprocessing adsorption technologies additive manufacturing	Broadly interested in adsorption technologies for applications ranging from manufacture of new healthcare products and foodstuff to CO2 capture.
Appolinaire Djikeng	tropical livestock genetic improvement smallholder farmers	Director of the Centre for Tropical Livestock Genetics and Health (CTLGH). https://www.ctlgh.org/resources/publications/
Alan Duncan	pastoral livelihoods livestock systems climate uncertainty	Leads the Jameel Observatory for Food Security Early Action for University of Edinburgh. The Observatory is focused use of early warning technologies to better prepare for drought in East Africa. It's goals are to enhance wellbeing and reduce hunger among East African pastoral communities.
Katherine Dunn	electrosynbionics bionanotechnology renewable energy	Research on electrosynbionics, which involves the development of devices that use biological or bio-inspired components to generate, use or store electricity. This includes biophotovoltaics and biobatteries.
Victor Elvira	AI statistics signal processing	Interested in time-series, Bayesian modeling, and statistical methods for inference/prediction. Most of the tools I develop can be directly applied in problems relevant to sustainability.
Daniel Friedrich	renewable energy heating and cooling data-driven engineering	Develop and apply mathematical methods to practical problems in energy system design and optimisation, in particulat for decarbonising thermal energy systems.
Raja Ganeshram	environmental adaptation	Most of current reaserach is on Arctic climate change through NERC's Changing Arctic Ocean programme. specifically looking at biogeochemical and ecological impact of Arctic Climate change.
Jennifer Garden	sustainable polymers catalysis materials	Focus on improving the sustainability of plastics across their lifecycle. We approach this by making materials from renewable resources (e.g. plants and CO2), improving the efficiency of production processes (by making new catalysts) and investigating opportunities to improve recycling technologies.
Ross Grassie	quantum AI sustainability	Interested in the potential of quantum computing to address sustainability challenges.
Bjarnhedinn Gudlaugsson	energy transition renewable energy energy policy	Understanding decisions and policies in the context of the energy transition, energy system and policy implementation to provide practical information and support policy-making.
Aliakbar Hassanpouryouzband	sustainable chemistry renewable energy thermodynamics	Development of tools to enable hydrogen as a low-cabon energy pathway, and the use of sustainable chemistry technologies such as climate engineering, water desalination, gas storage, cold energy storage, etc.
Sian Henley	ocean science polar regions ocean governance	Focussed on making ocean science more sustainable and employing science to make human use of our fragile oceans more sustainable. Also interested in ocean science and observations to underpin effective evidence-based decision-making for ocean governance, policy and management to protect and restore them.
Lea-Anne Henry	science and policy renewable energy environmental adaptation	Work centred on engaging with multiple stakeholders to develop the evidence base needed to implement and build better policies around oceans and marine ecosystems. I have strong links with the fisheries, tourism, oil and gas, and renewables sectors around the Atlantic. I engage with government agencies and international conventions with the aim of co-producing the evidence we need about the impacts of our activities and climate change to ensure marine policies are truly leading us on a path toward a more sustainable future.
Claire Hobday	energy decarbonising heating and cooling	Tackling issues of heating and cooling through understanding and developing solid-state refrigerant materials. We do this by analysing the structure of materials via diffraction and computational methods and understanding how the refrigerant properties are altered.
Alex Hutchison	data & AI for good climate change responsible innovation	The Data for Children Collaborative with UNICEF is a joint partnership between UNICEF, The Scottish Government and the University of Edinburgh’s Data Driven Innovation Programme which seeks to enable improvement in outcomes for every child. We draw on the strengths of our partners and their network to bring insight and solve problems using data and responsible innovative data practices, with a focus on delivering against the Sustainable Development Goals. Our mission is to provide the platform that brings together the appropriate data and expertise to answer our challenge questions for children across a variety of themes and geographies.
Susan Jarvis	sustainable Food systems agritech animal welfare science	Interested in Sustainable Food Systems, and in particular the role of animal welfare science to ensure sustainable and socially acceptable food production systems. Leads the delivery of UG programmes and courses in Global Agriculture and Food Security, as well as the DDI Agritech Talent programme aimed at upskilling learners in data science and technology relevant to sustainable food systems.
Emily Johnston	biotechnology microbial cell factories synthetic biology	Development of yeast cell factories for the production of plant triterpenoid compounds. These compounds have huge potential in many industries; for example as surfactants in cleaning products, as vaccine adjuvants and anti-inflammatories in therapeutics, and as gelling agents and foam stabilisers in food products. Some compounds provide novel functionalities (SDG 3 and 9), while others are bio-based alternatives to petrochemical-derived chemicals (SGD 12 and 13).
Joe Kennedy	sustainable food systems AI chronic disease	Works on simulations to assess the health and environmental impact of shifting diets. I'm interested in utilising novel machine learning methods in such simulations to boost their performance as well as integrate new datasets to assess a broader array of questions involving land use change and biodiversity impacts.
Ruth King	ecology statistics/AI conservation	Expertise in statistical ecology, and in particular developing new statistical tools and associated model-fitting tools to analyse different types of ecological data. The aim is to improve our understanding of the given ecosystem which in turn may aid, for example, conservation management.
Marc Krautzberger	renewable energy technological solutions to manage the nexus between climate change and poverty social science and policy	Interested in how policymakers and firms manage competing demands (e.g. economic vs. environmental goals) in the process of developing and providing technological solutions in response to societal challenges.
MennatAllah Labib	carbon capture and storage decarbonisation climate restoration	Testing and development of a direct air capture technologies to remove carbon dioxide form the atmosphere, thus offsetting the carbon emissions of hard-to-abate sectors, and hopefully, eventually remove excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Wei Li	environmental remediation greenhouse gas removal clean air net zero	Development of low energy solutions for multiple greenhouse gases removal at the climatically relevant scale to enable a transition to a net greenhouse gas neutral future.
John McCloskey	risk co-production urbanisation	We run the GCRF Tomorrow's Cities Hub which aims to reduce disaster risk for the 2 billion new urban residents of tomorrow's rapidly expanding cities. We use interdisciplinary methods to understand risk and tools for risk assessment that can democratise the concept of risk and allow poor communities to argue for safer and more human future urban expansion.
Encarni Medina-Lopez	satellite data for coastal environmental applications renewable energy artificial intelligence	Expertise in water and energy and how these two interact in the natural environment. My research focuses on the development of tools to improve the monitoring of coasts and oceans using remote sensing and artificial intelligence.
Dimitri Mignard	water-energy-food nexus agritechnology desalination	Technologies for irrigation, desalination and energy access, assisting with access to clean water, food production and reforestation, all using clean energy, and dedicated to serve poor communities in low income countries.
Dominic Moran	environmental, agricultural and food systems economics	Interested in definitions and metrics of sustainability, economic appraisal of technological options using non-market valuation, and behavioral and political appraisal of technology adoption.
Bart Pander	autotrophic biotechnology bussiness	Interested in non-photosynthetic autotrophic microbiology and biotechnology.
Androniki Papathanasi	renewable energy net zero buildings eradication of fuel poverty	Interested in domestic energy consumption patterns and socio-technical sustainable low-carbon energy solutions to carbons Scotland's building sector and eradicate fuel poverty by 2045.
Symon Podilchak	AI sensors engineering	Working on a UoE spinout which deals with AI and RF solutions for recycling.
Pedro Rangel de Faria	synthetic biology plastic recycling biochemitry	Developing a biosynthetic pathway that allows the bacterium Escherichia coli to use monomers derived from PET plastics as precursors to more useful compounds, with more value added, allowing for a more sustainable and circular economy.
Björn Ross	AI social sciences & policy	Interested in responsible use of the technologies and resilience to nefarious uses. Particular focus in people's interactions with one another over technology and people's interactions with technology, using computational methods. This includes, for example, the automatic flagging of abusive social media content and the reduction of bias in AI methods that evaluate user-generated content online.
Michael Rovatsos	AI and its application to sustainability	Focus on AI algorithms that can support the development of technologies supporting fairness, equality, and social justice. As part of my role at the intersection of research and innovation, I am also interested in many other areas of sustainability where AI and data science can be applied.
Rosa Santomartino	space microbiology astrobiology space biomanufacturing	Building a sustainable future for space exploration, by developing microbial biotechnologies which will implement circular economy for life support systems.
Giulio Santori	negative emission technologies, energy	Development of negative-emission engineering devices
Matthew Staitis	geology palaeoclimatology climate science	Interested in the study of past climates (palaeoclimatology) to inform us of the consequences we face under different scenarios and highlights humanity's role as a geological force in shaping our climate future going forward.
Iain Struthers	renewable energy energy system environmental impact	Life Cycle Assessment of prospective energy technologies and systems to assess the environmental impacts of technologies for a sustainable future. Specialised in offshore renewable energy, and other energy system technologies.
Joyce Tait	life science innovation policy and regulation responsible innovation	Focus on genetic technology solutions to challenges relevant to Net Zero and biodiversity policy objectives, considering: development of business models and value chains for innovative technologies; regulatory systems, standards and guidelines and how they can support of constrain innovation.
Camilla Thomson	renewable energy environmental impact energy systems	Developing analytical tools for better evaluating the environmental impacts of energy systems and technologies. This aims to inform the rapid transition to low-carbon energy systems and support sustainable development. This is achieved by both evaluating emerging technologies, and exploring how they can be best combined and developed to produce energy systems that are secure, equitable, economically viable, environmentally sustainable and socially acceptable.
Shuo Wang	green financing greenwashing CSR disclosure	Impact of corporate ESG performance on the cost of capital; he causes and consequences of the assurance quality of the corporate ESG disclosure; greenwashing and its capital market consequences.

This article was published on 2024-10-15