º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ the School
Royal Academy of Engineering
º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ is one of four Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) established Centres of Excellence which lead the exchange of best practice in teaching and research for a more sustainable built environment.
Sustainability is a theme that is evident within all our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Within the civil engineering, construction and building services programmes, sustainable building design is a core theme, whereas our transport programmes place greater emphasis on sustainability in policy and modes of travel.
Our Building Energy Research Group (BERG) supervises over 30 PhD students and, over the next four years, at least 20 further PhD students will be trained. The team has excellent laboratory facilities, access to full-scale test houses and has recently purchased over £300k of equipment to support practical field work to monitor domestic and non-domestic buildings. Energy modelling at the building and urban scale underpins much of their world-class research.
One of our ambitions as an Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) Centres of Excellence (CoE) is to develop these facilities so they can be used to enhance the practical training of undergraduate and post-graduate students.
For RAEng Centre of Excellence status, our new curriculum developments are interdisciplinary in nature, focussed around problem-solving approaches, and include the following key areas of innovation:
- Sustainable architectural design – implementing Building Information Modelling;
- Domestic buildings – energy performance and occupant behaviour; and
- Non-domestic buildings – component and system performance.
We welcome the opportunity to develop novel and effective means of sharing knowledge and practices in collaboration with other Centres of Excellence.
In addition to subject-specific peer-based academic and industry networks within which staff are already active, we have a few specific mechanisms to collaborate externally:
- º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ hosts CEDE, the Centre for Engineering and Design Education which has a national leadership role in sharing best practice in teaching and learning across the engineering and design disciplines.
- We strongly encourage students and staff to join the professional institutions as members, and participate in regional and national events (e.g. CIBSE, ICE, RICS and CIOB); several events are hosted in the School every year. These events are excellent networking and knowledge-sharing opportunities.
- An annual academic colloquium is be used to showcase Sustainable Building Design research and teaching innovations in the School (and other Centres of Excellence). This is an open colloquium, so that teachers of Sustainable Building Design from other institutions can participate and exchange best practice.
If you would like to know more or collaborate with us, please get in touch.
The group of key staff that to take the lead on RAEng CoE activities are:
Dr David Allinson
Reader in Building Physics, Building Energy Research Group (BERG) Lead
Professor Malcolm Cook
Professor of Building Performance Analysis, (Acting) Dean of the School of Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering
Professor Kevin Lomas
Professor of Building Simulation, Director of º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ Centre for Doctoral Training in Energy Resilience and Built Environment
Professor Dennis Loveday
Professor of Building Physics
Professor Jonathan Wright
Professor of Building Optimization
Professor Mohamed Osmani
Professor of Sustainable Design and Construction
Read our latest news article with the Royal Academy of Engineering:
September 2024
Professor Qiuhua Liang named Royal Academy of Engineering Fellow
