UKERC - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Principal Investigator of an EPSRC SEN
- Research Fellow in Industrial Decarbonisation at the University of Leeds
Ahmed Gailani is a Research Fellow in industrial decarbonisation at the University of Leeds. He is currently undertaking whole system research to explore how the industry can reduce its greenhouse gasses emissions to reach Net Zero by 2050. Ahmed is interested in modelling industrial energy use, decarbonisation technologies and future infrastructure availability.
Ahmed is currently the principal investigator of an EPSRC SEN hub early career research grant titled "Rethinking the Design of Great Britain's Capacity Market (RED CAT). He worked as an industrial renewable energy and battery consultant for the Renewable Energy Test Center (RETC) in California. Ahmed was employed with the UN Migration Agency when he was part of the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq. Ahmed received fully funded Studentships in 2014 and in 2017 to study for MSc and PhD degrees.
Alan Foster is a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Air Conditioning & Refrigeration with a general interest in heat transfer and fluid dynamics related to food refrigeration. Current interests are in refrigerated retail display and cold storage.
Job Titles:
- Director of Anglia Ruskin 's Global Sustainability Institute
Professor Aled Jones is the inaugural Director of Anglia Ruskin's Global Sustainability Institute (GSI). His research focuses on risks and opportunities in finance and governments from global resource trends such as food, energy and water. He has recently been appointed a member of the UK-US Taskforce on the Impact of Extreme Weather on US/UK Food Security and was a President Bill Clinton Distinguished Lecturer. He chaired a working group on climate finance within the Capital Markets Climate Initiative (CMCI) on behalf of Greg Barker, the Minister for Climate Change in the UK Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and sits on the steering group for CMCI. He is also a Managing Director for the P80 Group Foundation which, in 2012, signed the Little Rock Accord with Club de Madrid to help facilitate global investments into climate change solutions.
Job Titles:
- Natural Environment Research Council Industrial Innovation Fellow
Alona is a Natural Environment Research Council Industrial Innovation Fellow and a Senior Lecturer in Energy & Environmental Sciences. She is based in the Plant, Soil and Land Systems research group within Lancaster Environment Centre and is a core member of Energy Lancaster, leading the Energy & Environment Theme.
Alona's research focuses on the implications of the low carbon energy transition on the local environment, including ecosystem function, properties and service provision. She use a range of desk, field, laboratory and modelling approaches to resolve understanding, taking a positive approach - how can we decarbonise energy supplies, utilising more land for renewable energy infrastructure whilst maximising environmental co-benefits?
Job Titles:
- Professor of Geography
- University of East Anglia
Andrew Lovett is a Professor of Geography in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia (UEA). His academic background is in human geography and since moving to UEA in 1990 he has been involved in a range of projects concerned with applications of GIS, landscape visualisation software and statistical techniques.
His current focus is on future rural land-use change, including research on renewable energy systems funded by the UK Energy Research Centre and the Social, Economic and Environmental Research (SEER) project into Multi-Objective Land Use Decision Making funded by the ESRC. He is also co-leader of the Wensum Demonstration Test Catchment project funded by Defra and the Environment Agency.
Job Titles:
- Primary Care Physician and Professor of Primary Health Care at UCL
Andy Haines was formerly a primary care physician and Professor of Primary Health Care at UCL. He developed an interest in climate change and health in the 1990's and was a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the 2 nd and 3 rd assessment exercises and review editor for the health chapter in the 5 th assessment. He was Director (formerly Dean) of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine from 2001- October 2010.
Andy chaired the Scientific Advisory Panel for the 2013 WHO World Health Report, the Rockefeller /Lancet Commission on Planetary Health (2014-15) and the European Academies Science Advisory Council working group on climate change and health (2018-19). He currently co-chairs the InterAcademy Partnership (140 science academies worldwide) working group on climate change and health and is also co-chairing the Lancet Pathfinder Commission on health in the zero-carbon economy. He has published many papers on topics such as the effects of environmental change on health and the health co-benefits of low carbon policies. His current research focuses on climate change mitigation, sustainable healthy food systems and complex urban systems for sustainability.
Anita undertakes crop, energy and evironmental predictions as part of a consortium on the FAB-GGR project (bioenergy and carbon capture). She administers the development of the global MiscanFor model for bioenergy crop growth, environmental effects and energy production and has modified and extended the model to use multiple spatial scales under climate scenarios.
Under her industrial fellowship, she has been working with a partner company and its growers to refine crop yield in commerical settings.
Job Titles:
- Research Associate at the Centre for Energy
Antonios Katris is a Research Associate at the Centre for Energy (CEP) at the University of Strathclyde. His academic background includes studies in both mathematics (at undergraduate level) and economics (at postgraduate level). He holds a PhD (University of Stirling) in environmental economics and his expertise includes analyses using input-output frameworks and computable general equilibrium (CGE) models.
He joined CEP in 2015 as a researcher for the EPSRC-funded project ‘Energy Saving Innovations and Economy-wide Rebound Effects' where his research focus was on the potential economy-wide impacts of energy efficiency improvements. He now works on a range of CEP projects focused on industrial decarbonisation and energy efficiency (through different EPSRC Impact Accelerator projects) and electrification of transport.
Antony Froggatt joined Chatham House in 2007 and is a senior research fellow in the Energy, Environment and Resources department.
He studied energy and environmental policy at the University of Westminster and the Science Policy Research Unit at Sussex University, and is currently an honorary research fellow at Exeter University.
At Chatham House he specializes in global energy security and European electricity policy. He has worked as an independent consultant for 15 years with environmental groups, academics and public bodies in Europe and Asia. He has also worked as a freelance journalist. In 1992 he co-authored the World Nuclear Industry Status Report, a now annual independent review of the nuclear sector.
Astley is a Research Fellow in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Aberdeen. He is a chartered engineer and environmental scientist, with a BSc in Mechanical Engineering and a PhD in environmental science.
With extensive experience in the energy industry, both in fossil fuel extraction and power generation, Astley is now a member of the environmental modelling group in the Institute for Biological and Environmental Science located in the University of Aberdeen. His research focusses on the mitigation of greenhouse gas from land use and energy and product production and use and has developed plant growth, soil biophysical and life cycle assessment models to aid this research.
Job Titles:
- Professor in Marine Ecology at the University of Aberdeen
Beth Scott is a Professor in Marine Ecology at the University of Aberdeen. She has a multi-disciplinary background in marine ecology, oceanography and fisheries. Her approach focuses on the functional linkages between fine scale bio-physical oceanographic processes, flexible individual life history traits and population dynamics of a range of fish and seabird species through both empirical data collection and modelling approaches. Her focus has been the spatial and temporal identification of critical marine habitats where mobile predator and prey species interact.
In the last decade her research portfolio has been focused on the understanding of the effects of marine renewable energy systems on multi-trophic interactions and the methods for co-developing a Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) decision-support system with a range of stakeholders (Offshore Renewable Industry, Government and NGOs) to better incorporate ecosystem service knowledge and values into effective policies.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Politics at Exeter University
Brett Day is Professor of Politics at Exeter University and is the Director of the Land, Environment, Economics and Policy Institute.
He specialises in environmental economics, working in the field of ecosystem services. The particular focus of his research is the development of methods and knowledge for the support of environmental decision-making.
Brett has a PhD in Economics from University College London and took up a faculty position in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia in 2005. In 2015 he joined the Department of Politics in Exeter University.
He has published widely in the academic literature including outlets such as Science, the Review of Economics and Statistics and the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. He maintains close links with government and business, applying the methods of environmental economics to problems of environmental management in both public and private sectors.
Job Titles:
- Director for the MSc Energy Policy
Bridget Woodman is course director for the MSc Energy Policy course and a member of the Energy Policy Group in the School of Geography, University of Exeter.
Previously she worked at Warwick Business School as a UKERC Research Fellow in its Infrastructure and Supply theme. Prior to that she undertook her DPhil on Renewables and Distributed Generation at SPRU, University of Sussex.
The majority of Dr Woodman's work is focused on the policy and regulatory aspects of a transition to sustainable energy systems and her publications reflect this area she has developed. She currently sits on the Board of Trustees for Cornwall Neighbourhoods for Change.
Bridget has been involved in engaging with a wide range of stakeholders, including companies, communities and individuals on both climate and energy related issues. Bridget has provided advice, reporting and consultation on energy issues for Green Alliance, European Commission, DTI, BERR and Greenpeace.
Bridget has a strong focus on policy and regulatory aspects of delivering sustainable energy systems from a multidisciplinary perspective.
Job Titles:
- Brunilde 's Research Interests Include Sustainability, Socio - Technical Systems, Corporate.
Brunilde's research interests include sustainability, socio-technical systems, corporate responsibility, energy transitions, and the governance of metals and minerals. She joined the UCL Energy Institute in 2020 as a research fellow in socio-technical energy transitions, and uses Systems thinking and System dynamics modelling in interdisciplinary projects to reveal interconnected system feedback mechanisms. She is currently conducting an analysis of industries decarbonisation strategies and their socio-political drivers, to assess their potential in shaping future national energy transition pathways. Brunilde also remains an Honorary fellow of the Sustainable Minerals Institute's Julius Kruttschnitt Minerals research centre (JKMRC), Queensland, Australia.
Caroline Hattam is an environmental economist whose main area of research is in the assessment and valuation of marine ecosystem services using both monetary and non-monetary techniques. She is particularly interested in how valuation methods can be improved, especially for ecosystem services that are not currently traded through markets.
Caroline is currently working on projects exploring the impact of ocean acidification on ecosystem services from UK waters, the impact of invasive and outbreak species, and changing species distributions, on ecosystem services from the North Sea, the Baltic Sea and the Western Mediterranean. Previous projects have included an assessment of the state-of-the-art in the valuation of biodiversity and natural resources, the marine ecosystems and marine economics chapters of the UK's National Ecosystem Assessment, and a study into the economic and social impact of the closure in Lyme Bay to scallop dredging and demersal trawling.
Prior to joining PML, Caroline worked in academic and non-governmental organizations, both in the UK and overseas, on a range of projects focusing on human use of the natural environment.
Job Titles:
- Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Transport Studies
Caroline Mullen is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Transport Studies (ITS), University of Leeds. Her research focuses on implications of transport and mobility for social, economic and environmental sustainability, with an emphasis on travel needs, active travel and social and health equalities. This involves development of analytic frameworks for policy development and social research methods especially qualitative methods with professionals and public (including deliberative methods, mobile interviews). She is a member of the Faculty Research Ethics committee and school representative for research ethics, and leader of the ITS Social and Political Sciences Research Group.
Caspar is a PhD Researcher at the University of California, Davis, and University of Southampton, UK. His PhD explores the environmental and social implications of the negative emission technology Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS). His work is a part of the ADVENT (Addressing Valuation of Energy and Nature Together) project and is funded through a NERC studentship. Caspar uses environmental economic and quantitative methods to explore trade-offs and co-benefits of BECCS across locations and scales, as well as to explore what a sustainable BECCS deployment may look like. His PhD has taken him from England to California, where he spends his free time enjoying the sunny climate.
Catherine Jones leads the UKERC Energy Data Centre at STFC. She is has a computing degree, is a member of the British Computer Society and a chartered Librarian. She has a wide experience in providing information systems and services to the academic community, both within and external to STFC using her software engineering and information management expertise to deliver effective services to user communities. Her personal research interests are the digital curation of software & data, persistent identification of software; linking research outputs (data, publications and software) and career paths for Research Software Engineers. She is a member of the Software Sustainability Institute's Advisory Board.
Job Titles:
- Co - Director, University of Oxford
Christian Brand is Associate Professor of Transport, Energy and the Environment the University of Oxford. He has more than 20 years' experience of research and consultancy on transport and energy. Dr Brand has published extensively on transport and energy policy and technology, with a strong focus on low carbon pathways in transport and mobility.
He co-led (with Jillian Anable at University of Leeds) whole-systems approaches to transport and energy within the Demand Reduction (2004-09), Energy Demand (2009-14) and Decision Making (2014-19) themes in UKERC. He was Co-I on the EPSRC iConnect and EC FP7 PASTA (EC 602624-2) projects which measured, monitored and evaluated active travel interventions, including the development of the carbon impacts module of the WHO HEAT tools for walking and cycling.
Christian's main area of research interest lies in the integrated analysis of transport-energy-environment-health systems at national and local scales to support evidence based policy making. He has established an international reputation for his pioneering work on measuring and evaluating personal travel behaviour and its impacts on energy use, climate change and health. His approaches to research are interdisciplinary, including techno-economic, socio-technical and socio-ecological assessments of transport and mobility and their energy, environmental and health impacts.
Christian Calvillo Munoz is a Research Associate in the Centre for Energy Policy. He is working on a number of CEP projects including Scotland's Net Zero Roadmap, and recently worked on the project "Energy Systems Impacts of Energy Efficiency" funded by the Scottish Government Climate Exchange programme.
He joined the Centre for Energy Policy in October 2016 and his work mainly focuses on the potential use of the Scottish TIMES model to analyse the impacts of energy efficiency changes linked to the Scottish Energy Efficiency Programme (SEEP), and how it may be used alongside and complementing other modelling platforms.
Christian's background includes energy system modelling and electronic systems. His research interests so far have been focused on renewable energy, distributed energy resources and economic analysis.
Christina Demski is a senior lecturer in the School of Psychology at Cardiff University. Apart from her work her UKERC work on public engagement with energy systems she is also Associate Director of the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations, where she is responsible for Theme 1 of the research programme exploring desirable and feasible low-carbon futures and lifestyles.
Her research explores issues within risk perception and communication, specifically public engagement with complex socio-technical and environmental issues (e.g. climate change, energy transitions). She has a background in environmental psychology but her work is shaped by a strong interdisciplinary perspective and the utilisation of mixed-methods. Christina's UKERC work covers public values for whole energy system transformations, including perceptions of costs associated with energy transitions, and the role responsibility and trust play in informing public acceptance. She is currently working on a project focused on public preferences for heat decarbonisation pathways.
Job Titles:
- Research Associate in Econometric Modelling at UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources
Chrysanthi Rapti is a Research Associate in econometric modelling at UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources. Her research interests span across various areas of applied econometrics, focusing on energy and environment, and macro-econometrics, macroeconomic modelling. Her current research is focused on the economic implications of climate change, renewable resources and environmental sustainability. She is also working on policy evaluation of energy schemes.
Colin's research spans sustainable energy governance at the intersection of communities, demand, mobility and climate change. He has worked on energy policy, regulation, business models and markets as a research at the University of Exeter and at SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex, and as a research consultant for Climate-KIC, Department of Energy and Climate Change and Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy. He currently works as a Vice-Chancellor's Fellow at University Bristol Law School and a Researcher in the Politics of Energy Demand at the Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions, Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford.
Colin completed his undergraduate degree in Geography and History with a minor in Economics at the University College Dublin and both his postgraduate degree in Sustainable Development and his PhD in Geography at the University of Exeter. Between his various positions Colin has worked for a Geography Department, a Politics Department, a Business School, a School of Management and a Law School. In between, Colin worked as a steelworker, a mussel farmer and an energy efficiency consultant.
Job Titles:
- Senior Administrator and PA to the Director
Job Titles:
- Senior Research Fellow at the Imperial College London Grantham Institute for Climate Change
Dr Ajay Gambhir is a Senior Research Fellow at the Imperial College London Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment, where he has worked since 2010. His research focuses on how society can transition to a low-carbon economy, considering whole energy systems transformations, innovation and cost reduction in specific low-carbon technologies, and the socio-economic and policy implications of achieving a just transition.
He previously worked in the UK Government's Department of Energy and Climate Change as the Team Leader for EU and International Climate Change Economics. He also worked on the UK Climate Change Act, where he led on the design of the Committee on Climate Change (in which he later worked), the carbon budgets and annual emissions reporting framework.
Gambhir, Ajay, Isabela Butnar, Pei-Hao Li, Pete Smith, and Neil Strachan. 2019. "A Review of Criticisms of Integrated Assessment Models and Proposed Approaches to Address These, through the Lens of BECCS" Energies 12, no.
Job Titles:
- Senior Research Engineer at STFC
Dr Alan Ruddell is a Senior Research Engineer at STFC. In his early career, he was an electronics and electrical system design engineer and project manager. In the 1990s he joined Imperial College and then Rutherford Appleton Laboratory to work on energy storage in renewable energy systems. Since then he has been involved in a wide range of wind, solar, and energy storage research projects. He is particularly interested in the characteristics of energy storage technologies, and their suitability in both grid-connected and standalone applications.
Dr Andrew Burlinson joined the University of Sheffield as a Lecturer in Economics in 2023, and is a member of the Centre for Competition Policy (UEA). Dr Burlinson has researched issues related to consumer behaviour, technology adoption and inequality in energy markets and published in international peer-reviewed journals: Research Policy, Social Science and Medicine, and Energy Economics. Andrew's research recently uncovered the causal and deleterious effects of fuel poverty on health, financial wellbeing, and healthy eating. Andrew has contributed to policy discussions and roundtables with leading experts and practitioners, including National Energy Action and the APPG on Fuel Poverty and Energy Efficiency. He has worked on several projects with funding from Ofgem and EPSRC, and is currently exploring the distributional effects of the energy price crisis (funded by UKERC)
Job Titles:
- University Academic Fellow
Dr Anne Owen is a University Academic Fellow in End Use Energy Demand. Anne's research includes calculation of the UK's Greenhouse Gas Consumption-based account - an Official Statistic reported by Defra. Previously, Anne held an EPSRC Fellowship award on Energy Demographics, where she looked at the role of UK households in the UK's changing energy demand, considering which types of households in which parts of the country were contributing to reducing energy demand and GHG emissions and which households contributed to increases from 1990-2018.
Anne's current projects build on the idea of the household and its relationship with climate policy. She has worked with the National Infrastructure Commission to consider the distributional impacts to UK households when funding Greenhouse Gas Removal technologies. As part of the UKERC funded ‘Whole Person, Whole Place' project she investigated the type of households which apply for Domestic Energy Incentive grants and where in the country they tended to be found.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor of Finance in the Edinburgh Business School at the Heriot - Watt University
Dr Bing Xu is an Associate Professor of Finance in the Edinburgh Business School at the Heriot-Watt University. Bing's research focuses on banking and sustainable finance, decision analytics and energy economics. She has worked on 10+ multidisciplinary funded projects and worked with a diverse team of academic and industrial partners. Currently, Bing is working on several UKRI funded projects to address non-technological barriers around business and finance models, social dynamics, performance analytics and policy: "GREEN ICEs" (EP/T022701/1); "Fast-track vaccine cold-chain assessment and design for Mass Scale COVID-19 Vaccination in Bangladesh" (EP/V028332/1); "Zero Emission Cold-Chain" (EP/V042548/1); "UKRI Interdisciplinary Centre for Circular Chemical Economy" (EP/V011863/1); "Digital Circular Electrochemical Economy" (EP/V042432/1).
Faye applies qualitative social science approaches to understand the public and private sector organisations and individuals responsible for delivering transformation in our energy system. Faye has previously worked on an evaluation of Energy Efficient Scotland; the Scottish Government's cornerstone national retrofitting strategy for reducing energy consumption and decarbonising heat in the built environment. This project involved interviewing members of local authorities across Scotland, and generated numerous reports to Government. Faye has also completed an ethnographic investigation of how, through their work, heating engineers can shape the central heating technologies installed in homes and how they come to be used, and applied qualitative approaches to better understand the changing nature of construction work with the introduction of transformative technologies.
Dr Oluleye is an Assistant Professor (Lecturer) in the Centre for Environmental Policy and a member of the Sargent Centre for Process Systems Engineering with over 15 years combined experience in academia and the process industry.
She has a BSc in Chemical Engineering from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria in 2008, completed an MSc in Advanced Chemical Process Design at the University of Manchester in 2010, worked as a Process Engineer before beginning her PhD in 2012.
Dr Oluleye's research is centred on developing frameworks to support adoption of low-to-zero carbon innovations for industrial systems (comprising industrial processes and their associated energy systems for a plant, site, or cluster).
She has worked as the lead researcher in a range of projects in both academia and industry, covering a variety of topics including advanced waste heat recovery in industry and the integration of renewable energy, exploiting business models to support technology adoption, emerging strategies for decarbonising energy intensive industries, and renewable gas production in Europe, and globally.
Job Titles:
- Co - Director, University of Edinburgh
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- Head of Communications and Policy
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- Co - Director, Cardiff University
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- Co - Director, University of Leeds
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- Co - Director, STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
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- Co - Director, University of Strathclyde
Kirsty Hamilton OBE is involved in the UKERC project on energy infrastructure, looking at...
Job Titles:
- Co - Director, Warwick Business School
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- Co - Director, Plymouth Marine Laboratory
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- Co - Director, University of Leeds
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- Research Associate in Sustainable Futures, Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research ( CRESR )
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- Director
- Director, Professor
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- Research Fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Resources
She is currently a Co-Director for the EPSRC Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Supergen Hub and is a member of the Scottish Government Offshore Renewables Research (ScotMER) and on the European Marine Board Working Group on Marine Renewable Energy. She was a member of the Ministerial DEFRA Marine Protected Areas Science Advisory Panel (2009-12) as well as the Forum Coordinator for Marine Renewable Energy Forum (2012-19), Marine Alliance for Science and Technology, Scotland (MASTS).
Job Titles:
- Birmingham Energy Institute