Network Team

Dr Suzanne Bartington (Principal Investigator) is a Clinical Research Fellow in Environmental Health in the Institute of Applied Health Research and Honorary Consultant in Public Health at Public Health England.

Her research portfolio extends across three core themes: (i) health and environmental impacts of ambient and indoor air pollution; (ii) sustainable transport mobilities specifically links between active travel infrastructure and health; (ii) environmental public policy formulation, implementation and evaluation. Suzanne has cross-cutting interests in development of new methods for monitoring, analysing and modelling impacts of air quality and application of mixed-methods approaches for intervention evaluation.

Existing research includes studies funded by the Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC), National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Public Health Research and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). Suzanne is also a regular panellist and speaker at regional national and international public and policy engagement events on the topics of air quality, health and active travel transport policy.

 

Sam Akehurst is a Professor of Advanced Powertrain Systems at the University of Bath and Deputy Academic Director at IAAPS – Institute for Advanced Automotive Propulsion Systems. He leads a wide range of collaborative low carbon and zero emissions powertrain research projects with automotive companies including Jaguar Land Rover, Ford, McLaren Automotive and Bentley. He is interested in future air quality challenges in the automotive sector from a technology requirement standpoint with respect to the adoption of more stringent emission standards and the measurement of non-exhaust emissions.

William is Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Birmingham, and until recently was Head of School for Geography, Earth & Environmental Sciences.  Trained as an atmospheric chemist, his academic background has spanned studies of polar stratospheric ozone layer reactions through to measurements of ground level air composition in Antarctica, Delhi and Beijing, working in Cambridge, Leeds, California and now Birmingham.  He leads the NERC WM-Air project, a 5-year £5m programme of activities to apply environmental science expertise in support of improved regional air quality, health and economic growth, co-designed with partners ranging from local authorities to SMEs and industry bodies across the West Midlands region.

Dr Huw Davies ( Coventry University) is an Assistant Professor in Automotive Engineering, Chartered Engineer, Fellow of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers and Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. His primary research interest is the development of technical policy and regulatory frameworks relating to automotive sector. He has established and led cross-disciplinary transport policy focused research to support the deployment of alternative vehicle technologies for programmes sponsored by EU H2020; IEA-HEV TCP; EU IEE; EPSRC.

Professor Nigel Gilbert holds a Distinguished Chair in Computational Social Science at the University of Surrey.  Nigel was one of the first to use agent-based models in the social sciences, in the early 1990s, and has since published widely on the methodology underlying computer modelling, and on the application of simulation for applied problems such as understanding commercial innovation, managing environmental resources such as energy and water, forecasting price movements in the English housing market, and supporting public policy decision-making. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours of 2016 for services to engineering and the social sciences. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the British Computer Society, and the Academy of the Social Sciences, and is a Chartered Engineer. He was a member of the ESRC Council and has chaired and been a member of numerous committees for the UK Research Councils. Nigel is also the Director of the ESRC funded Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus (CECAN), which develops and tests methods for the evaluation of complex public policies, and Principal Investigator of the NERC ANTICIPATE project, which is examining the unanticipated consequences of public policies on air quality.

Dr Ian Hamilton is an Associate Professor at the UCL Energy Institute, University College London, UK. Ian’s research in the built environment is focused on the nexus of climate, energy and health. This includes building stock energy performance, sustainable building technologies, indoor environment and health impact assessment.  Ian is the Executive Director of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, a collaboration of 35 leading research institutions around the world. Ian is the Principal Investigator for the International Energy Agency’s Annex 70 – Building Energy Epidemiology, a Co-Investigator on the UKRI Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions, the NERC funded APEx London Air Pollution and ANTICIPATE projects, and Newton funded Capability and Energy Poverty project. Ian is the UCL lead for the IEA and UNEP Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction initiative.  Ian has an interdisciplinary publication record in leading journals including Energy Policy, Applied Energy, Energy & Building, The Lancet, and BMJ.

Dr Stuart Hillmansen PhD MSc DIC BSc ARCS AMIMechE MIoP AFHEA is Senior Lecturer in Electrical Energy Systems at the University of Birmingham. With 18 years of experience in railway research, he is currently head of Railway Traction Systems Research Group, a globally leading group who are developing advanced solutions for the next generation of zero carbon railway propulsion systems. It is part of the Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education (BCRRE) that was named one of the Midlands most innovative businesses as part of ‘Innovation 50’ 2019. Stuart is academic Lead of the HydroFLEX project, a collaboration between Porterbrook and BCRRE to develop the UK’s first Hydrogen Fuel Cell Hybrid Rail vehicle which benefitted from Innovate UK FOAK 3 scheme funding. He published 92 papers and has 3 recorded/prepared inventions; and provided extensive consultancy services to industry and public sector clients.

Felix Leach is an Associate Professor of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford, a post held jointly with that of Fellow and Tutor in Engineering Science at Keble College.  His research interests are in emissions and efficiency of thermal propulsion systems and air quality. Felix is the co-PI on the OxAria project measuring air quality with a network of sensors across Oxford. Also in the emissions space, Felix has worked with Cambustion on world-leading instrumentation capabilities enabling identification of emissions hot-spots – deployed recently in trials on buses in service on routes in Oxford jointly with Oxford City Council and Oxford Bus Company.  In addition, he has spent over a decade working in close collaboration with Jaguar Land Rover using world-leading measurement capabilities to develop a clean engine for the 21^st Century.  Felix also founded the annual Oxford Air Quality Meeting (www.oaqm.org) which draws together experts in vehicle emissions, air quality measurement, public health, and policy.  Felix is a Chartered Engineer (MIMechE), a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and a Member of the Society of Automotive Engineers.

Martin Mayfield has 24 years’ practice as a designer of engineering systems at Mott MacDonald and as a Director of Arup (Education Leader for the UK, Middle East and Africa, Mechanical and Electrical Engineering Leader for North West and Yorkshire and lastly Sheffield office Leader). These roles entailed leading teams of over 60 professional Engineers from a range of disciplines, working on a diverse array of projects in the UK and overseas. During this time, he built an industrial research portfolio (>£3m) including Multi- Systems Modelling Structures for Future Cities and Integrated Infrastructure Frameworks for Cities. These roles entailed leading teams of professional engineers from a range of disciplines, working on a diverse array of projects in the UK and overseas. During his time at Arup he worked on infrastructure projects, stadia, airports, niche sustainable buildings.

Martin returned to academia, when he took up a Chair in the Department in 2013. He was made the Infrastructure Research Leader for Engineering at Sheffield and is leading the Sheffield component of the UKCRIC initiative. Together with Dr Densley Tingley he leads the RISE (Resources, Infrastructure and built Environments) research group which now includes 14 researchers working across the nexus of technology and infrastructure to enable the creation of a built environment that allows humanity to thrive within the carrying capacity of the planet, and, in so doing, restore the balance between humanity and natural systems.

Dr Sarah Moller is a Senior Research Fellow (Associate Professor) in the Wolfson Atmospheric Chemistry Laboratories at the University of York, and the Air Pollution Theme Leader for the National Centre for Atmospheric Science. For the past 8 years Sarah has worked at the interface between air quality research and policy, including as an embedded, independent academic and adviser within the Government Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). Her research interests are in how air pollution data can be more fully utilised to support policy, and the process of effective knowledge exchange between policy makers, academics and funders, including its role in driving research agendas.

Sarah holds an independent Knowledge Exchange Fellowship, NERC Air Quality Science in Support of Government Strategy and is the academic lead for the Science and Technology Facilities Council Air Quality Network (SAQN). She is an ex-officio member of the Defra Air Quality Expert Group and is a Senior Fellow on the Defra Chief Scientific Adviser’s Systems Research Programme supporting the Department in integrating systemic approaches into the policy making process.

Francis is an expert on the causes and effects of air pollution. Before gaining his Professorship in Atmospheric Science in 2018, he held a Birmingham Fellowship (2012-2017), which allow outstanding, high potential researchers to establish world-leading research groups (currently 4 Postdocs, 10 PhDs, 1 Masters students, and a group administrator. He has led several multi-institute and multinational projects to completion. He provides policy directed research for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), Department for International Development (DFID), Department for Transport (DfT), and Transport Scotland. He publishes widely (73 peer reviewed papers, 4 book chapters and many government reports). He is an editor for the prominent ‘Atmospheric Measurement Techniques’ journal.

Dr Karl Ropkins is a Senior Research Fellow in Transport Studies within the Environment Faculty of the University of Leeds and Consultant with over fifteen years’ experience working on a range of environmental and related applied (air pollution, vehicle emissions, energy demand, and food supply) projects. His main research interests focus of emissions measurement and environmental impact assessment, while consultant activities, although strongly aligned, include contributions on a broad range of commercial sector instrument and software development, fieldwork and data analysis projects. Recently, as UK partner on the parSYNC Research Project, an international collaboration set up to bring smaller, lower cost and energy consumption vehicle emission monitoring systems to market, he led key elements of the development of parSYNC®, GasMOD^TM and CA/GE^TM technologies, including patent-pending work on the parSYNC’s unique particulate matter/number (PM/PN) sensory array calibration algorithm, and design of the CA/GE, a highly portable PM/PN calibrator. He also recently led the London-phase of work evaluating EDAR, Vehicle Emissions Remote Sensing System (VERSS), as part of work for the UK Department for Transport (DfT) and Transport Systems Catapult (TSC). His related data analytics work includes methods for automating the high-volume analysis of emissions and air quality data (aircraft emissions applied at Heathrow UK, and PEMS, VERSS and other vehicle data used in several studies). He has authored/co-authored numerous papers and a number of software tools, including the open source packages pems.utils, loa and openair. He is an active participant in efforts to evolve both technical and legislative aspects of the vehicle emissions monitoring sector. He is a Member of the Royal Society of Chemistry (MRSC), Member of Transport Scotland’s Emission Data Analysis Partnership (EDAP) and Member of the North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) facilitated Heavy Duty Diesel Emissions Inspection Working Group.

Katie is the TRANSITION Clean Air Network’s Administrator. Based within the Institute of Applied Health Research at the University of Birmingham, she is involved in a variety of projects, ranging from the FUEL study (evaluating national School Food standards) to COPE-WM (examining the contribution of occupational exposures to COVID-19 and approaches to control among healthcare workers).

Jason is the project support officer for Transition with his time split between the Oxfordshire County Council iHub team and the Oxford City Council Air Quality team. He successfully completed an apprenticeship in Business Administration last year and is just starting to study for a qualification in Data Analytics. He has been supporting the iHub team in EC H2020 and Innovate UK funded projects using his skills in community engagement, administration and data analysis.