Dr. Catalina Spataru joined UCL Energy Institute in 2010 as a Senior Researcher and currently is a Lecturer in Energy Systems and Networks. Catalina is the Course Director, for the UCL Master of Research in Energy Demand Studies.

Previously she worked as a Research Fellow, Lead consultant and Journalist. She has a PhD in Gas Build-up and the frequency of explosions following releases of Natural Gas/Hydrogen mixtures in buildings, obtained from Loughborough University, UK.  During her studies she spent a semester in Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain with Socrates-Erasmus Programme. She has been studying or visiting various universities Al. I. Cuza University (Romania), Complutense de Madrid (Spain), Carnegie Mellon (USA), University of Perugia (Italy). Recently (May 2014) she delivered presentations at Princeton University (USA) and MIT (USA) (as visitor researcher – May 2014). She  is regularly invited as a speaker both in academic and professional circles, public engagement events and media. In 2014 was invited to speak at Cheltenham Science Festival and interviewed by the Sunday Telegraph.

She received the Award Trevithick Fund in 2011 from Institution of Civil Engineers for the paper Low Carbon Housing Design Informed by Research, published in the Proceeding of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Engineering Sustainability.

She is the regional representative of the IEEE Women in Power (Region 8- Europe). She was the scientific chair for BSO’14 and  SEB’14 conferences.