Dr Tim Forman
- Associate Teaching Professor, Course Director and Director of Studies
About
Dr Tim Forman is an Associate Teaching Professor at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), University of Cambridge, where he is a Course Director and Director of Studies for the Master's and Postgraduate Certificate in 'Sustainability Leadership for the Built Environment'.
Tim's multidisciplinary background spans architecture, engineering and construction, the sector in which he began his career, and innovation finance. His teaching and research address the transition to sustainable, climate-resilient built environments that meet social and economic priorities, and the capacity building this requires in professional practice, in organisational contexts and across the wider sector. His interests include low-carbon, nature-positive and energy-efficient buildings; retrofit, refurbishment and adaptive reuse; circular economy principles and circularity strategies; systems theory and systems thinking; construction technology and the scaling of innovation; interdisciplinary collaboration; and approaches to design, construction and operation that respond to climate risk and enhance social and ecological resilience.
Tim has led and supported sustainability teaching across more than a dozen degree programmes for architects, engineers and built environment practitioners, and has delivered numerous training and executive education programmes for professionals and organisations in business and industry. At Cambridge he also teaches on the MSt Architecture programme and serves as a PhD supervisor in the Department of Architecture.
Tim maintains close engagement with industry, providing strategic advisory and technical consultancy on a wide range of sustainability and resilience challenges and contributing to expert boards, working groups and practitioner-led initiatives. Having previously co-founded an impact investment firm, he now supports the scaling of sustainability innovations by advising early-stage companies and start-up incubators and accelerators.
Prior to assuming his current role, Tim joined the Centre for Sustainable Development in Cambridge's Department of Engineering in 2015 as a researcher and teaching fellow, and he later served as a Senior Research Associate at CISL.