From left to right: Dr Duncan Grassie, Dr Minnie Ashdown, Dr Rayan Azhari
We were delighted to recently celebrate the graduation of Dr Minnie Ashdown, Dr Rayan Azhari and Dr Duncan Grassie.
PhDs are always highly challenging, but for this group of students, Covid lockdowns and associated restrictions were put in place just as the PhD researchers were about to undertake, or in the process of undertaking, their data collection. The students had to rapidly reformulate their projects whilst not knowing when the restrictions would be removed. So we are especially proud of the adaptability, perseverance and resilience shown by this group of students.
Dr Ashdown’s thesis developed a novel method to estimate building air changes in unoccupied, naturally ventilated buildings, by bringing together different fields of applied mathematics. This work has far reaching implications which may change the way we think about ventilation.
Dr. Azhari’s thesis, “London and UK Office Buildings: Investigating energy use and landlord/tenant influences” revealed that 30% of London’s large office buildings consume 89% of overall energy. Statistical analysis showed building characteristics explain up to 18% of energy use intensity variation, with the potential for building occupancy and management accounting for the rest.
Dr Grassie’s work focussed on school buildings and how to decarbonise them. He explored how digital models of existing buildings can be created and populated with crowdsourced data to understand where energy saving could be made, without compromising indoor environmental quality.
These three projects show a range of research methods being applied to a number of different building types, highlighting how the LoLo CDT contributes to improving the energy performance and health outcomes of our entire building stock.
