Faculty of Engineering
 

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Lucelia Rodrigues

Head of Department of Architecture & Built Environment, Professor of Sustainable and Resilient Cities, Faculty of Engineering

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Biography

Professor Lucelia Rodrigues is Chair of Sustainable and Resilient Cities in the Faculty of Engineering, University of Nottingham (UoN). Lucelia is a passionate, global leader in the resilience of communities and buildings in a changing climate, involved in several major sustainability projects focused on energy, carbon management and comfort.

She is Deputy Director of the University of Nottingham Energy Institute, and Founder and Director of Transport, Mobility & Cities @Nottingham, an initiative bringing colleagues from all faculties together to tackle the challenges our cities face working with industry, authorities and catapults. Prof Rodrigues also runs the MArch in Architecture and Sustainable Design masters programme.

She is the Head of Department of Architecture and Built Environment and the first female professor in the 178-year history of the department (Est. 1843 as Nottingham Government School of Design).

Lucelia is also a member of the Buildings, Energy & Environment Research Group.

Research gate https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lucelia_Rodrigues

LinkedIn https://uk.linkedin.com/in/luceliatarantorodrigues

Twitter https://twitter.com/luceliataranto

ORCID ID 0000-0002-0038-6578

Scopus Author ID: 55174327500

Teaching Summary

Lucelia has been a full-time academic at the University of Nottingham since 2008 where she teaches mostly at post-graduate level with a strong focus on environmental design and sustainable… read more

Research Summary

Lucelia qualified as an architect in Brazil in 1999 and spent the next five years working in practice on residential and commercial building projects where she acquired experience in sustainability… read more

Selected Publications

Panel Member

2016 - present Sustainable Nottingham strategic working group with Nottingham City Council

2016 - present Nottingham as a Smart City strategic working group with Nottingham City Council

2016 - present Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) validation panel 2016

2011 - present UK Passivhaus Steering Committee

2012 Beyond Zero Carbon Housing

Keynote, Invited Speaker, Lecturer (other Institutions)

04.03.16 - "The Nottingham H.O.U.S.E." Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK.

29.01.16 - "Shared Energy for Resilient Communities". Collaborative Housing & Community Resilience Seminar funded by the ESRC. Sheffield, UK.

30.11.15 - "Meadows Community Focus Event". MOZES General Meeting. Nottingham, UK.

04.11.15 - "Community Energy in the Meadows" at the Em-Power Nottingham. Nottingham, UK.

05.03.13 - "Voluntary Building Standards: Why Bother?" at Ecobuild. London, UK.

04.10.12 - International Real Estate Federation (FIABCI) and Sinduscon: "Is Added Sustainability equal to Added Value?". Sao Paulo, Brazil.

14.05.12 - "Low-carbon housing design informed by research" (with Mark Gillott). Institute of Civil Engineers, Thomas Telford Lecture Series. London, UK.

2011 - "Retrofit: Moving in and Moving on - the Applicability of Phase Change Materials in Housing". AECB Annual Conference, Sustainable Building Association. Nottingham, UK.

2010 - "Reflections on the Performance of the BASF House". Good Homes Alliance (GHA). Nottingham, UK.

2010 and 2011 - "The Application of Phase-Change-Materials in Building Design". Invited Lecturer at the MSc & MArch Sustainable Environmental Design - Architectural Association (AA), London, UK.

Invited expert

  • The Challenge of Retrofitting Residential Buildings in China, Chongqing, China, 31st October to 2nd November 2014
  • Zero Carbon Hub Overheating in Housing Workshop 16 July 2014

Debate Panel Member/ Invited expert

31.10- 02.11.14 The Challenge of Retrofitting Residential Buildings in China, Chongqing, China

16.07.14 Zero Carbon Hub - Overheating Workshop

16.10.14 Bright Energy Futures Tweet-Up (Saint-Gobain & Ecobuild)

05.12.14 RE.WORK Future Cities Summit

18.10.13 UK Passivhaus Conference

Committees, Advisory Boards, Reviewer

  • Conference co-chair for the 14th International Conference in Sustainable Energy Technologies (SET) 2015
  • Scientific Committee: Passive and Low-Energy Architecture (PLEA) Conference; Building Simulation and Optimisation Conference; Passivhaus UK Conference; International Conference of Sustainable Energy Technologies
  • Strategic Advisory Panel Member and Organiser: UK Passivhaus Conference 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016; SET 2015, 2016; Beyond Zero Carbon Housing 2012
  • PhD External Reviewer: Brunel University 2013
  • Journal Reviewer: International Journal of Building and Environment, International Journal of Energy Conversion and Management, International Journal of Sustainable Cities and Society, Proceedings of the Institute of Civil Engineering - Engineering Sustainability, Journal of Intelligent Buildings International.
  • Grant Application Referee: Leverhulme Trust

Vitality Indicators

  • Invited Conference Session Chair: International Conference in Sustainable Energy Technologies (SET) 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014; International Conference on Passive Low-Energy Architecture (PLEA) 2011; UKPH 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015; Vertical Farming Conference, 2012; Beyond Zero Carbon Housing 2012.
  • Conference Contributor: Annual All-Ireland Architecture Research Group Meeting Dublin (AIARG) 2015; International Conference on Urban Sustainability and Resilience (USAR at UCL) 2014; Resilience 2014; Sustainability in Energy and Buildings (SEB) 2012; SET 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016; PLEA 2008, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016; GHA 2010, International Conference on Innovation in Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) 2012.
  • Media Appearance: Housebuilder managzine April 2016; FCO "See Britain Through my Eyes" film series, BBC breakfast 2007, 2008; Nottingham Evening Post 2008 (PhD); Voice of America 2008 (Creative Energy Homes); ITV Central News 2010 (Nottingham H.O.U.S.E.); 'Isto É' magazine (the Brazilian equivalent to Times) 2010; Alderney Press 2006.

Prizes and Awards

  • 2010 Best Research Paper for 2010, the Institute of Civil Engineers Trevithick Prize (joint)
  • 2010 2nd Place in Sustainability for the Nottingham HOUSE at Solar Decathlon Europe (joint)
  • 2010 Best use of timber for the Nottingham HOUSE at Ecobuild, London (joint)
  • 2008 1st Prize, Paula Rosa Eco Kitchen Design Award, Nottingham (joint)
  • 2005 Industry Studentship for PhD Programme, Nottingham
  • 2005 PhD Scholarship for Research Excellence from Brazil, University of Nottingham
  • 2004 Foreign & Commonwealth Office Scholarship, Chevening Programme for Future Leaders
  • 2004 Postgraduate Scholarship for Overseas Students, University of Nottingham

Lucelia has been a full-time academic at the University of Nottingham since 2008 where she teaches mostly at post-graduate level with a strong focus on environmental design and sustainable architecture. Her work is very cross-disciplinary, building the link between architecture, building science and renewable energy technologies. Her 'student evaluation of teaching' scores are consistently amongst the top 5% in our Faculty.

Students under her guidance have won over 30 awards for their projects, including the Nottingham H.O.U.S.E (Home Optimising the Use of Solar Energy) for the Solar Decathlon competition. Some highlights are listed below.

Passivhaus Student Competition

2015 - Chenglei Sheng for Multi-Beeston - 1st Prize

2015 - Sabrina Mostofa for iBee - Highly Commended

Isover Multi-Comfort House Architectural Design Competition

2016 - Hong Long & Abdulquadri Ademakinwa, 1st Prize National Stage - Biophilic District in Brest

2016 - Fenty Indarti & Wang Lu, 2nd Prize National Stage - SEED: Sustainable Evolving Env. of Dvor in Brest

2016 - Sophia Madhi Gnanaprakasam & Pryia Singh, 3rd Prize National Stage - Sustainable Housing in Brest

2014 - Heba Nazer, 1st Prize National Stage & Special Prize Intern Stage - School in Gaziantep, Turkey

2014 - Gigih Nalendra, Haipeng Wang and Nadia Vasti, 2nd Prize National Stage - School in Gaziantep

2012 - Thomas Bennett and Denny Chan, Second Prize, National Stage - Regeneration of the Trent Basin

2012 - Funsho Parrott and Sian Hogdson, Third Prize, National Stage - Regeneration of the Trent Basin

2012 - Seda Kacel and My Dao, Shortlisted at the National Stage - Regeneration of the Trent Basin

2012 - Hung Dang, Shortlisted at the National Stage - Regeneration of the Trent Basin

2012 - Stella Praba and Rong Xu, Shortlisted at the National Stage - Regeneration of the Trent Basin

2008 - Iona Campbell, First Prize, National Stage - School design.

2008 - Thomas Bennett, Second Prize, National Stage - School design.

2008 - Liming Qiao, Third Prize, National Stage - School design.

'The Student Award for Low Carbon Environmental Design' RIBA EM Awards

2010 - Oliver Peach, Alexander Loren-Gosling & Peter Phillips: Green Street Zero Carbon Housing - Winner.

2010 - David Brook & Samantha Barclay: Felton Road Zero Carbon Housing, Meadows - Special mention

2009 - Jun Aso & Jin Dong Wu for Green Street, Zero Carbon Housing, Meadows - Highly Commended

2009 - Benjamin Hopkins, Rachel Lee, and Chris Dalton for the HEART, Zero Carbon Housing, Meadows, Nottingham. Highly Commended

2009 - Alex Lewis, Seema Mistry, and Daniel Dunn, E.ON 2016 House Stage 2 retrofit, achieving Code for Sustainable Homes Level 3. Special mention

Best Paper at the Conference for Masters Students (London Metropolitan University & Arup)

2011 - Rahul Suralkar: solar responsive kinetic facade shading systems inspired by nature

Mario Cucinella Best Case Study Project Award

2013 - Meghna Purkayastha - first prize

2013 - Zhu Wei and Sohni Rajiv Rao - second prize

Rushcliffe Solar Best Use of Photovoltaics Prize

2014 - Chetan Tippa, Regeneration of Matlock, UK

2013 - Sohni Rao, School in Recife, Brazil

2012 - Rishika Shroff & Deepika Singhal, Regeneration of the Trent Basin, Nottingham

Blueprint Award for Excellence in Sustainable Processes and Design

2013 - Sohni Rao, School in Recife, Brazil

2012 - Thomas Bennett and Denny Chan, Regeneration of the Trent Basin, Nottingham

RE-Design Challenge Competition by Hermes Real Estate and supported by ARUP:

2009 - Best technical thinking for Agam Shah

International Solar Decathlon competition "Sustainability Award"

2010 - University of Nottingham Student Team: The Nottingham H.O.U.S.E.

TTJ/Timber & Sustainable Building Timber at Ecobuild prize

2010 - University of Nottingham Student Team: The Nottingham H.O.U.S.E,

Jeffrey Cook Passive and Low Energy Architecture (PLEA) Conference Travel Scholarship

2015 - Lorna Kiamba

2011 - Daniela Besser

Current Research

Lucelia qualified as an architect in Brazil in 1999 and spent the next five years working in practice on residential and commercial building projects where she acquired experience in sustainability in architecture. She then completed an MSc in Renewable Energy and Architecture sponsored by a Foreign & Commonwealth Office Scholarship through the Chevening Programme followed by a doctorate funded through an Industry Studentship and a PhD Scholarship for Research Excellence from Brazil exploring the thermal performance and climate resilience of low-energy houses as part of her doctoral research. This work, completed in 2009, involved the integration and exploitation of high capacitance and high inertial materials to mitigate overheating in dwellings built using lightweight construction materials, and included some of the first in-situ studies of phase-change materials in housing. It was one of the first works in the UK to identify and quantify overheating in housing using empirical data and the application of probabilistic future climate scenarios in dynamic computer simulation, and it contributed to the establishment of national targets.

She is part of the local advisory groups such as the 'Nottingham Green Partnership', 'Nottingham Smart City' and Nottingham City Homes' Carbon Reduction Advisory Forum, and recently launched the Nottingham Climate Emergency Design Initiative to support the City with achieving carbon neutrality in the built environment. She is also engaged in international panels such as the Connected Places Catapult Urban Link African academic board and the Passive Low-energy Architecture associates board, in addition to a number of academic scientific committees. She has circa 120 peer-reviewed research publications.

She has to date been principal investigator in 16 and co-investigator in 14 funded research projects, with a combined value of over £84M (circa £11M direct income), working with key industry partners and policy makers, such as AT Kearney, Siemens, Igloo Blueprint, Tarmac, Saint Gobain, SmartKlub, Connected Places Catapult, Nottingham City Council and Nottingham City Homes. Examples of projects include the Nottingham 2028 Carbon Neutral Housing (focused on determining where to invest in order to reduce emissions from housing in Nottingham), The Active Building Centre (aiming to transform the UK construction and energy sectors through the deployment of active buildings contributing to more efficient energy use and decarbonisation), EV-elocity (looking at increasing the uptake of electric vehicles through helping consumers to monetise their investment using vehicle-to-grid innovation, enabling the optimisation of energy use and the decarbonisation of cities and communities) AMiCc (aiming to demonstrate how wireless technology can unlock a range of the blockers to the market transitioning to electric vehicles and decarbonized cities), Human Switch (a project funded by European Space Agency to develop a platform providing an owner interface for electric vehicle management and integration into the energy market), Re-inhabiting the City (a range of projects exploring the sustainable reoccupation and repurposing of city centres), Smart Campus Initiative (using our campuses to examine and evaluate user behaviour and to trial smart concepts, particularly in the energy and mobility domains), Creative Energy Homes (a research/educational 8-house showcase of innovative energy efficient solutions for sustainable homes and communities), Smart Nottingham (our SMART City programme), Project SENSIBLE (exploring 'Storage Enabled Sustainable Energy for Buildings and Communities'), Project SCENe (Sustainable Community Energy Networks at Nottingham's Trent Basin), TURAS (Transitioning towards Urban Resilience and Sustainability), EnvirUP (Scaling-up retrofit project that developed a new external wall insulation system), SCENIC - Smart Controlled Energy Networks Integrated in Communities and EDUCATE (Environmental Design in University Curricula and Architectural Training in Europe).

Past Research

Some of my current and past projects:

The Active Building Centre - The Active Building Centre's vision is to transform the UK construction and energy sectors through the deployment of Active Buildings contributing to more efficient energy use and decarbonisation.

EV-elocity - EV-elocity looks at increasing the uptake of electric vehicles through helping consumers to monetise their investment using vehicle-to-grid innovation, enabling the optimisation of energy use and supporting the decarbonisation of cities and communities.

AMiCc - AMiCc will demonstrate how wireless technology can unlock a range of the blockers to the market transitioning to electric vehicles and decarbonized cities

Re-inhabiting the City - explores the sustainable reoccupation of city centres

Smart Campus Initiative - The University has opened up its campus to enable students, academics and businesses to examine and evaluate user behaviours and to trial smart concepts, particularly in the energy and mobility domains.

Creative Energy Homes - A research/educational 8-house project and showcase of innovative energy efficient solutions for sustainable homes and communities.

Smart Nottingham - Our SMART City programme aims to work with our universities and with industry to deploy emergent technology solutions across energy, transport, housing, and health services while exploring the interaction between these. We want to focus on adopting disruptive technology that improves lives as a result.

Project SENSIBLE - Storage Enabled Sustainable Energy for Buildings and Communities

Project SCENe (Sustainable Community Energy Networks) at Nottingham's Trent Basin

TURAS - Urban Resilience and Sustainability

EnvirUP - Scaling-up retrofit project funded by Innovate UK to develop a new external wall insulation system for building retrofit.

SCENIC - Smart Controlled Energy Networks Integrated in Communities

EDUCATE - Environmental Design in University Curricula and Architectural Training in Europe

Supervised completed PhDs:

Le, Ms Thi Ho Vi, (2019) Investigating the Influence of Design Parameters on the Indoor Environmental Quality and Comfort in Primary Schools in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam PhD Thesis, University of Nottingham

Siebert, A. Michael (2019) Barriers to Innovation in UK Volume House Building PhD thesis, University of Nottingham

Ghabra, Noura (2018) Energy efficient strategies for the building envelope of residential tall buildings in Saudi Arabia. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham.

Alvarez, Laura B. (2018) Morphological, social and perceptual dimensions of public places in British neighbourhoods. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham. Item availability restricted.

Haji Adenan, Rozia (2018) Fostering Social Resilience of the Low-Income for Sustainable Housing Communities.PhD thesis, University of Nottingham. Item availability restricted.

Sougkakis, Vasileios (2017) An investigation into the overheating risk in low-energy new-built homes. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham. Item availability restricted.

Camboim Salatino Tubelo, Renata (2016) The application of the 'fabric first' approach to improve thermal comfort and energy efficiency in affordable housing in Southern Brazil. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham. Item availability restricted.

Kiamba, Lorna Ndanu (2016) Optimising environmental design strategies to improve thermal performance in office buildings in Kenya. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham.

Wu, Jindong (2015) Thermal comfort and occupant behaviour in office buildings in south-east China. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham.

Future Research

Future research focus is, in addition to the above, also moving towards energy use and comfort standards in developing countries, off-site construction and custom build solutions, and independent/assisted living.

I welcome enquiries from potential PhD candidates from Home, EU and international countries who are interested in the following research areas:

  • Sustainable practice of architecture,
  • Resilience of communities and buildings,
  • Energy use and comfort standards,
  • Passive heating and cooling techniques,
  • Modern methods of construction,
  • Prefabrication and custom-built homes,
  • Independent/assisted living.

Faculty of Engineering

The University of Nottingham
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