Everyone in the LoLo community would like to congratulate Dr Harry Kennard on passing his viva without corrections in November 2019.
Harry’s thesis title was “Experienced temperature, health and the implications for the built environment”
What was it about?
I made use of data from the UK Biobank, which is a huge on-going health study of UK adults. Over 100,000 participants wore a device on their wrist which measured activity levels and temperature. I investigated whether this device could be used to infer the immediate thermal environment of the person who wore it, and found that it could. This allowed me to develop the concept of ‘experienced temperature. I found that more active people had more diverse experienced temperatures, and that older people and people who have health conditions tend to have less variety. This is important because it can help us understand how home heating cycles might optimised from an energy efficiency perspective.
What were the highlights of LoLo?
The sheer diversity of disciplines that make up the members of the LoLo community was really important. It helped greatly throughout my PhD to be able to talk to people with very different experience bases. I also found the support that the program provided essential to getting through the process of a PhD, which at times was challenging – while these moments weren’t highlights per se, my supervisors and the support staff were really great.
What are you doing now?
I’m still at UCL, now working on a 4-year post-doc with the Lancet Countdown. This is a yearly publication which tracks a wide array of metrics designed to capture the impacts of climate change on health. It really fits well with the multidisciplinarity that I honed during my at LoLo.
