SDG 9: Industry, Innovation & Infrastructure

Technologies that foster sustainable innovation

Name	Areas of research	Description
Afra Alkatheeri	biotechnology green industrial practices waste management	Interested in bioproduction using yeast, so as to move awayfrom harmful chemical synthesis and enhance commercial prospects of labile bioproduction system. Prior experience as an academic researcher in membrane desalination may also help me to contribute.
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.
Christopher Beckett	sustainable construction thermal performance housing resilience	Engineering behaviour of earth building materials and structures, aiming to improve their durability and design.
Melissa Bedinger	social sciences & policy, human factors, resilience	Interdisciplinary work in human factors, systems approaches, cascading climate impacts, and sustainable development and global health. Currently using sociotechnical systems approach in neighbourhoods or cities, to understand climate impact scenarios, model possible interventions, and inform resilience planning.
Frédéric Bosché	built environment digital construction project management	Interest in digital twinning and the built environment, as well as digital technology to support Net Carbon assessment in the built environment.
Euan Brechin	quantum information refrigeration technologies	Interested in the use of earth abundant molecule-based magnets for cryogenic refrigeration and information processing, replacing the critical resources currently employed, including Helium and the Lanthanides.
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.
Fiona Bunn	biotechnology circular economy metals	Focus on bioleaching of critical metals from electronic wastes, contributing to the circular economy for a sustainable future. The rare earth metals that are at the top of the EU critical resources list, and viable solutions must be found for their effective recycling, especially from products such as electric car batteries, wind turbine magnets and mobile electronic devices.
Raffaella Calabrese	fintech, credit risk, climate change	Focus on incorporating climate change in the risk assessment process of financial institutions. Working with several Fintech companies in designing new services for financially vulnerable individuals. Also supporting small businesses in improving their chance of accessing external finance.
Dominic Campopiano	biocatalysis industrial biotechnology sustainability	Using biocatalysts (natural and engineered) to catalyse chemical reactions, as well as developing chemical tools to reduce waste and increase yields of enzyme-catalysed chemical reactions.
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.
Charles Cockell	space astrobiology microbiology	Interested in sustainable biotechnology in space to support human space exploration.
Michael Cowley	chemistry discovering new chemistry for a sustainable society	Working on the chemistry of the most abundant metals in the Earth’s crust - aluminium and silicon - to provide synthetic methods to prepare bulk and fine chemicals with lower energy costs and without reliance on limited reserves of precious metals.
Jamie Davies	synthetic biology medicines biotechnology	Focussed on improved health and well-being, particularly through research and also dissemination to and partnership wit the global south in the area of pharmacology and diagnostics.
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.
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.
Yuta Era	biotechnology recycling catalysis	Aiming to convert waste metals to useful products such as catalysts, with a particular focus on catalysis promoted by biogenic metal nanoparticles.
Daniel Fosas de Pando	net zero buildings adaptation indoor air quality	Expertise in sustainable buildings that enhance the indoor environment. This involves appraising impacts on occupants and the energy and environmental footprint of buildings. Given the lifespan of buildings, the scope includes research on both climate change mitigation and adaptation.
Andrew Free	biotechnology anti-microbial resistance biogeochemical cycling	Interested in the application of microbial communities to bioremediation, sustainable waste treatment and energy generation from waste. We also have interests in the evolution and spread of antimicrobial resistance and approaches to tackling it.
Chris French	biotechnology biomass pathway engineering	Research on biomass degradation for sustainable non food-based feedstocks, also metabolic pathway engineering for conversion of sugars to valuable products as alternative to chemical processes.
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.
Ross Grassie	quantum AI sustainability	Interested in the potential of quantum computing to address sustainability challenges.
Boris Grot	datacenters big data processing	Focused on improving energy-efficiency of data-intensive computing. This includes designing energy-efficient microprocessors, servers and entire datacenters with a focus on energy efficiency.
Julian Hall	optimization software; open-source; energy system modelling	Leading the development of HiGHS, an open-source linear optimization software that will enable non-governmental organizations, early-stage companies, and government ministries in lower income countries to use meaningful models for sustainable energy system modelling.
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.
Michael Herrmann	electric mobility	Novel mobility solutions that combine energy efficiency with convenience and communal acceptance. We are asking what level and type of individual traffic will be desirable and tolerable in future and what structural changes we need to support the best options. Solutions to these questions may benefit from work in my group on optimisation, machine learning, and multi-agent systems.
Yuner Huang	renewable energy sustainable construction green material	Application of advanced steel solutions in renewable energy infrastructure, and structural optimization for sustainable construction such as demountable structural solutions.
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.
Louise Horsfall	sustainable biotechnology resource efficiency synthetic biology	Translating academic research into novel industrially-usable platforms for the sustainable production of scientifically improved enzymes, bio-based chemicals and other bio-derived materials by exploiting new analytical and bio-based technologies. Our disruptive innovations will lead to the development of unique and sustainable new products, derived from wastes and by-products, and demonstration of their cost-efficient and energy-saving production using novel biomanufacturing technologies.
Amanda Jarvis	green chemistry biotechnology	Development of greener and more efficient methods for chemical production, with a focus on using knowledge from both Chemistry and Biology to design better catalytic processes.
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).
Ohad Kammar	aAI programming languages	Interested in higher-level abstractions for statistical modelling and their analysis engines. A key aim is to make the models higher-level so it is easier to understand what it is doing and its biases, and lowering the entry-bar into the modelling activity.
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.
Sergio Lopez Dubon	renewable energy data science testing	Testing and improving tidal blades for a lie efficient and cheaper tidal energy
Jason Love	extraction recycling catalysis	Expertise in chemistry of the recycling and extraction of metals from their ores and other sources, including electronic waste, with the aim to develop new, sustainable, and environmentally benign processes that promote the circular use of metals.
Francisca Martinez Hergueta	composites, recycling, manufacturing	Life cycle assessment of sustainable composites. Development of recycling routes for thermoplastic materials and remoulding processes compatible with the structural requirements of the transport sector. Prediction of the mechanical response using finite element analysis and artificial intelligence/machine learning models.
Encarni Medina-Lopez	satellite data for coastal environmental applications renewable energy AI	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.
Andrew Millar	science policy biotechnology	Interested in systems thinking, open research practices and science policy for partnerships, and potentially to biotechnology for a circular economy in industry, food and health.
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.
Diego Oyarzún	biotechnology synthetic biology AI data science	Computational modelling and data science for better biotech solutions to global sustainability challenges.
Bart Pander	autotrophic biotechnology business	Interested in non-photosynthetic autotrophic microbiology and biotechnology.
Paul Patras	AI mobile networking	Interested in building neural models that aid the management of resources in mobile networks, with a view to reducing their carbon footprint.
Symon Podilchak	AI sensors engineering	Working on a UoE spinout which deals with AI and RF solutions for recycling.
Subramanian Ramamoorthy	AI technology in education healthcare technologies	Expertise in Robotics and AI, with broad interests in the applications of these technologies to helping address societal problems. I am particularly interested in the application of predictive modelling and design methods to advancing healthcare technologies, and technologies for energy and sustainable systems. Also, as an educator, I am keen to explore ways to improve the quality and access to education.
Win Rampen	renewables decarbonising heating	Working on grid scale energy storage, and interested in decarbonising building heating with heat pumps, and technologies to help decarbonise agricultural/off road and construction machinery.
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.
Susan Rosser	engineering biology biotechnology biomedicine	Expertise in engineering biology approaches to engineer cells to perform novel functions e.g. build pathways for the production of biosurfactants, develop enzymes for cold water cleaning and new ways for biology to build things in general. My research is also focused on developing cell and gene therapies that are cheaper, more effective and widely available.
Joanna Sadler	biotechnology waste valorisation plastic degradation	Development of novel biotechnologies to valorise post-consumer waste (in particular plastic waste) into high value products. This is ultimately aimed at enabling transition to a more sustainable, circular economy for the chemicals industry.
Giulio Santori	negative emission technologies, energy	Development of negative-emission engineering devices
Ione Smith	renewable energy recyclable composites tidal turbine blades	Developing key offshore renewable energy technologies whilst minimising waste and impact. Evaluate the use of recyclable thermoplastic resin in the manufacture of a composite tidal stream turbine blade and the impacts on blade performance.
Sean Smith	net zero future infrastructure construction technology	Delivery of net zero pathways, backcasting for green economy skills and construction innovation for future infrastructure
Eva Steele	biotechnology biorefinery circular economy	Interested in valorisation of lignin, a major component of lignocellulose which is one of the most abundant sustainable and renewable resources on the planet. This will contribute significantly to the economic viability of second generation biorefineries.
Adam Stokes	robotics bioelectronics engineering	Interested in robotics for a safer and sustainable world.
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.
John Thompson	energy efficient communications renewable energy sustainable infrastructure	Energy efficient solutions for wireless communications and internet of things systems. These technologies will help to underpin practical solutions in many application domains such as: low carbon energy generation; sustainable industry and infrastructure; smart cities.
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.
Mark Wilkinson	renewable energy sustainable industry	Researching the geological storage of hydrogen to match supply from renewable energy to demand, the same with underground storage of compressed air, to enable the transition to sustainable and clean energy. we are also investigating Carbon Capture and Storage to decarbonise otherwise difficult CO2 emissions including cement manufacturing and iron and steel production.

This article was published on 2024-10-15