Built environment assignment supervisors
Students are supported by a supervisor who will guide their learning on both individual assignments and the group project. Assignment supervisors also contribute to the learning of the cohort as a whole by delivering sessions in their individual areas of expertise. Assignment supervisors will support Postgraduate Certificate students for the duration of the course. They will support Master’s student through the first year. Biographies of some of our most recent supervisors can be found below. Supervisors may change for future cohorts. Read more about our supervisors thoughts on the importance of sustainability education for built environment leadership. In year two of the Masters students are supported by a dissertation supervisor. Find out more about our dissertation supervisors here. |
Dr Philip Graham  | Dr Philip Graham is an award-winning postdoctoral ‘UKRI Design Innovation Scholar’ at the University of Cambridge, an architect of almost 20 years at Cullinan Studio, London, a Bye-fellow and Director of Studies at Homerton College, Cambridge, a visiting researcher and teacher in sustainable housing design at Tampere University, Finland and a postgraduate supervisor at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainable Leadership. He is funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC, part of UKRI) to develop the transdisciplinary concept of Adjustable Housing. The aim of this three-year project is to design systems to improve the environmental, social and economic value of housing so that households can continuously vary their consumption of living space and financial equity until these better match their changing needs and means. To do this, Philip proposes a part spatial, part-tenurial and part-organisational system that would reduce the amount of floor space that a household owns for their exclusive use. This would, in turn, reduce the throughputs of carbon, energy and materials in what gets built, whilst improving resilience against economic shocks and changes in housing needs. Research methods to date - often with collaborators - include ethnographic studies (using surveys and interviews in different countries), equivalencing of spatial with energy outcomes, systems mapping and the development of an experimental design game method. Outcomes have included several journal papers and a programme of knowledge exchange across industry, practice and academia, with a book and further papers in the pipeline. Philip has current teaching experience at undergraduate and postgraduate levels (Universities of Cambridge, Tampere and Reading), drawing on 20 years in architectural practice, with awards from the RIBA (Research Trust Award, 2016), RIBA Journal (Rising Star, 2016) and the 2023 Thinkhouse Early Career Researcher Prize (Inside Housing magazine, UK). Before splitting his time between practice, teaching and research, he spent over a decade designing housing or housing-led masterplans for UK urban regeneration projects, and was in-country lead for the design of a new city and world heritage sites in eastern Libya. Philip studied in Sheffield, Bucharest (Ion Mincu), Cambridge and Reading, worked in London and Seattle (Olson Kundig), and has leadership experience in early years education, employee-owned business and the British Army (Royal Artillery officer). He lectures, delivers workshops, writes and reviews journal papers across multiple fields, always at the boundaries between industry, academia and policy. |
William F Lyons  | Bill Lyons is the Associate Dean for Security, Diplomacy, and Defense Programs for the College of Graduate & Continuing Studies at Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont. He holds several other positions at the university, to include the Director of the Center for Global Resilience & Security, the Site Director for the New England University Transportation Center, and a Professor of Practice in Engineering. Bill is the Founder and Chief Executive of the Fort Hill Companies LLC, a professional planning, design, and construction management firm based in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Bill’s practice has a global scope, having served clients on five continents and in 19 countries. In Boston, Bill directs planning and design activities for a significant portfolio of real estate development projects in the city’s Seaport District. Bill is a licensed attorney, professional engineer, urban planner, and real estate broker. He uses his diverse background to challenge traditional planning and design approaches and provide thought leadership for sustainable strategies in the urban context. He also lectures on construction, legal, and engineering topics. His research interests include urban climate resiliency, sustainable mobility, and the nexus between climate resilience, sustainability, and human security. Bill retired from the United States Army in the rank of Colonel as the Deputy Director of Logistics for the United States Army Corps of Engineers. Bill holds a Juris Doctor, a Master of Studies in Sustainability Leadership, a Master of Transportation and Urban Systems, a Master of Strategic Studies, and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Institute of Transportation Engineers and a member of the Chartered Institution of Highways & Transportation in the UK. |
Paul Michael Pelken  | Paul Michael Pelken is an experienced registered architect, academic, and innovator with a consistent 20 year track record of award winning and patented developments in design, architecture, and engineering. He has extensive experience working on projects ranging from industrial design to large scale architectural structures, and has practiced in Germany, Italy, the UK, USA and China. His work has been widely published and exhibited. He is driving change at the interfaces of academic and industry led developments, incl. EPSRC funded work at UCL, research supervision at the University of Cambridge, and Visiting Professorships at Nanjing University and Southeast University. Most recently he secured significant Innovate UK "KTP" and "Transforming Construction Challenge" grant funding in his industry role, and is co-inventor of 5 pending industry patents. Prior to assuming leadership roles to manage Research & Development portfolios in the construction industry, he was a tenured Research Professor at Syracuse University, Research Fellow at the New York State - Center of Excellence for Energy and Environmental Systems, and Director of SU's London Architecture Program. He has published over 30 papers, and has lectured and contributed to over 40 conferences internationally including several invited keynotes in the UK, USA, Germany, Finland and Colombia. Michael is founding partner of London based P+ Studio and Consulting, and Innovation Director for Keltbray Group. In 2017 he joined the faculty at the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, and was made Senior Associate in 2018. In 2019 he was appointed as Honorary Visiting Professor at City, University of London, followed by appointment as Visiting Professor at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, in 2021. |
Dr Judith Plummer-Braeckman  | Judith completed a PhD at the University of Cambridge considering the optimisation of the process of planning and developing large infrastructure projects, including the economic, social, environmental and institutional effects of delays in project development. With CISL she has been engaged in the FutureDAMS research project which explored how global capital flows can influence the emergence of more sustainable hydropower infrastructure. Judith is a tutor on both the Masters in Sustainability Leadership and the Masters in Interdisciplinary Design and the Built Environment as well as being an Affiliated Lecturer at the Department of Engineering. For the majority of her career, Judith has worked on large infrastructure and engineering projects in developing countries with the aim of bringing sustainable improvements in living standards and reductions in poverty. Judith's principal area of expertise is in the structuring, financing and economic development of infrastructure utilities and projects. Whilst working at the World Bank, she was jointly responsible for developing and implementing a strategy for re-engagement of the World Bank in the construction of large water infrastructure. Judith continues to advise the World Bank on sustainable infrastructure development. |
Dr Cyrille Dunant  | Dr Cyrille Dunant, Principal Research Associate, Department of Engineering. University of Cambridge Dr Dunant is a Principal Research associate in the Department of Engineering of the University of Cambridge. He is also the CTO of two spin-outs, Structural Panda Ltd and Cambridge Electric Cement Ltd. A material scientist by training, he has worked on concrete durability, structural design, steel reuse, cement clinkering and the economics of transition. He is active in promoting novel design methodologies and exploring new low-carbon methods for the production of materials. He is a member of RILEM, where he chairs a group on concrete durability, and also participates in fib committees looking at the decision process in building design. He is a member of the GLOBE consensus, a group which looks to disseminate globally best practice in construction design to minimise ecological impact, in particular in emerging nations. He was the technical lead in the Climate Bond Initiative’s “cement” criterion defining what represents sustainable investment in cement production. His overall research area is the decarbonation of construction, understood as a holistic problem involving everyone, from the structural designer to the material producers. He has pioneered novel modelling methods to link material and engineering problems to their economic and ecological consequences. But he is also active “in the lab” doing material science research. He has invented a scalable, electric process for the recycling of cement recovered from demolition waste, allowing for the co-recycling of steel and cement in electric arc furnaces. This development promises the production of zero-carbon Portland cement. |
Dr Renard Siew  | Renard Siew is Board of Advisor to the Centre for Governance & Political Studies (CENT-GPS) where he is responsible for advancing the organisation’s work in the field of climate change and sustainability.
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Dr Sarah Fitton  | Sarah is founder and Director of Aurora Engagements Ltd. Aurora Engagements is a small, flexible, and responsive consultancy working with clients to understand how best to meaningfully engage with stakeholders and how the social value of their built environment projects can be identified, created, articulated, maximised, measured and reported. Sarah specialises in, but is not limited to, projects concerned with flood infrastructure and with communities at risk from flooding. Some of her clients include the Environment Agency, Thames Water and Defra. Sarah spent 12 years working in industry at Arup in the fields of town planning, transport planning and social value. Her project experience ranged from large masterplans to small planning applications, to social value strategy development, to the development and facilitation of stakeholder engagement events. She also completed a PhD in the Centre for Sustainable Development at the University of Cambridge in 2013 examining the social value of infrastructure. Her research examined how the social value of flood infrastructure was articulated and perceived by both industry and communities and how the stakeholder engagement process impacted the perception of social value. She continues to carry out research in this area and has had a number of journal articles published and continues to publish her work both academically and in industry publications. Sarah is a Chartered Town Planner with the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI), a guest lecturer on social value for the CEM (Construction Engineering Masters) course at the University of Cambridge and a dissertation supervisor for the IDBE course. She is a member of the Environment Agency’s Stakeholder Engagement and Communications Community of Practice (SECCOP) and a member of the BREEAM Social Impact Technical Working Group. |