Energy
Applied Buildings and Energy Research Group
People
Operational Team
The operational team support the day-to-day operations of CABER and are the link people for the three core subject areas of monitoring and performance, people and delivery.
Dr Will Swan
Will Swan is a Senior Lecturer in the School of the Built Environment. He has been working in the area of sustainable retrofit fro 5 years, leading the Housing Application Area for the Salford Centre for Research and Innovation, which he also managed. He is now part of the CABER team and leads work in the area of assessment of delivery of buildings. He has a current portfolio of projects including SEEDS, Green Deal Go Early Monitoring and 2 Knowledge Transfer Partnerships. He was the co-Chair of Retrofit 2012 and is the co-Editor of the forthcoming book from Blackwell-Wiley, Retrofitting the Built Environment. Previously, he worked as part of the Centre for Construction Innovation where he advised construction clients and their supply chains on issues related to performance management and sustainable construction.
Dr Phil Brown
Phil Brown is Director and Senior Research Fellow at the Salford Housing & Urban Studies Unit (SHUSU) at the University of Salford, UK. He is a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society with particular interests in public policy and community and environmental psychology. Philip has led and contributed significantly to a wide number of multi-disciplinary projects including current work that looks at energy reduction, behaviour change and retrofitting. Philip has published numerous reports and produced a range of peer-review papers in the field of social policy and the built environment. He is the lead academic on end-use energy demand within the University of Salford’s Energy Hub. Philip sits on Greater Manchester’s Low Carbon Economic Area group for Customer Engagement and has been part of the Economic and Social Research Council’s (ESRC) Peer Review College since its inception in 2010.
Richard Fitton
Richard Fitton is the Technical Manager of the Energy House, a Victorian House in a climate-controlled lab. He leads the monitoring work undertaken within ABERG and is involved in a number of projects with regards to co-heating, u-Value measurement, as well as product and retrofit package testing within the Energy House. Richard has previously been a Building Surveyor and Energy Manager in the public sector. He also advises on the qualification of SAP Assessors and Green Deal Advisors.
Academic Team
The academic team are concerned with the identification and delivery of research, commercial research and industry engagement.
Professor Steve Curwell
Steve Curwell (BSc, MSc, RIBA) is Professor of Sustainable Urban Development (SUD) at the University of Salford, Manchester, UK, where he has been Director of Design in the School of the Built Environment and of the Urban Quality Research Centre. Steve led the development of a number of new Masters Programmes in urban design and sustainable building design. He is currently visiting professor at the University of Florence and will shortly take up a similar post at the Technical University of Dresden. Steve originally trained as an architect and urban designer. He was co-author of the University of Salford’s energy research strategy and emphasis on retrofit that has ultimately led to the energy hub facility at the university which enables whole building testing and energy evaluation.
Professor Sunil Vadera
Sunil Vadera is the Associate Dean Research and Innovation for the College of Science and Technology. He is a Fellow of the British Computer Society (BCS), a Chartered Engineer (CEng) and a Chartered IT Professional (CITP). His research is driven by the desire to close the gap between theory and practice in Artificial Intelligence. His main interests are in developing and applying data mining methods such as decision tree induction, Bayesian networks, self-organising maps and neural networks. His research has included using bayesian learning to develop a novel sensor validation model in collaboration with the Mexican Instituto de Electricas, a British Gas funded project applying data mining methods on SMART meters data, development of a system known as Dust-Expert for the Health and Safety Executive, and use of data mining for credit rating of sub-prime loans for East Lancashire Monelyline (IPS) Ltd. He is principal investigator of the EC FP7 SEEDS project that aims to develop "Self learning Energy Efficient builDings and open Spaces" that is in collaboration with 8 European partners, including CEMOSA, Fraunhofer, Ferrovial and University of Stavanger.
Professor Erik Bichard
Erik Bichard is Professor of Regeneration and Sustainable Development and at the University of Salford’s School of the Built Environment. During his career, he has worked as a sustainable change practitioner in the public, private, third and now the academic sector. Until June 2007, and for ten years, he was Executive Director of the UK National Centre for Business & Sustainability. His current interests lie in the exploration of alternative ways to communicate the need for sustainable change, and energy consumption in particular, His two books ‘Positively Responsible’ (Butterworth-Heinemann), written with co-author Prof. Cary Cooper and the forthcoming ‘The Coming of Age of the Green Community Group ‘which will be published by Routledge in 2013 explores these themes. He has researched energy and behaviour change in the realm of public building occupation, community and householder investment, and experimentally in the University of Salford’s Energy House. He is a frequent contributor to blogs, newspapers, TV and radio programmes covering a range of sustainability issues.
Professor Carl Abbott
Carl Abbott’s work focuses around the adoption of new technologies and innovation within the construction industry. Carl have previously managed the Centre for Construction Innovation and the Salford Centre for Research and Innovation. His current projects in the area are People, Energy and Buildings (EPSRC) looking at the adoption of renewables in homes, and Innopolis (INTERREG) looking at how cities support innovation.
Dr Yingchun Ji
Yingchun Ji is a Lecturer in building physics and performance simulation in the School of the Built Environment. He has been carrying out a number of projects in airflow modelling, low energy ventilation design and evaluation, and dynamic thermal modelling of buildings. Yingchun has also been working on a number of consultancy projects on naturally ventilated buildings to investigate their thermal performance and ventilation effectiveness using numerical methods such as Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Dynamic Thermal Modelling. He is now doing research looking at building retrofit and adaptation issues.
