5-week course: sustainability

Maria Manidaki

Maria Manidaki is Mott MacDonald’s global technical lead for net zero. A chartered engineer with more than 18 years’ experience in investment planning and carbon and asset management, she has led several strategic infrastructure decarbonisation projects.

Manidaki has helped water companies and other asset owners in the UK, Australasia, North America and the Middle East to plan and implement decarbonisation solutions.

A member of the Green Construction Board in the UK, she co-wrote HM Treasury’s 2013 Infrastructure Carbon Review and worked on both versions of PAS 2080.

Manidaki is a visiting lecturer on low-carbon infrastructure at Cranfield University and a technical adviser on net zero in several industry forums, including the ICE’s Carbon Project. 

Dr David Jackson

Dr David Jackson, associate net zero consultant at WSP, spent the early years of his career as a weather forecaster with the Met Office, which gave him an extensive view of the environmental impacts of climate change. Rather than continue predicting worsening events, he decided to change paths and help mitigate the effects of climate change.

Since completing his PhD on carbon management tools for the built environment at the University of Edinburgh, Jackson has worked at Costain, Sweco UK and WSP on embedding PAS 2080 and carbon management practices in construction projects.

An associate member of the ICE, he is also a chartered environmentalist and member of the Institute of Environmental Measurement and Assessment. 

Adam Slimlin

Adam is a Sustainability and Environmental Specialist with over 25 years experience in multiple sectors. He is currently Director of Sustainability, Climate and Resilience for Stantec as well as driving Digital Solutions and Innovation across Stantec. He has also founded his own company which has been providing expert advice to clients and companies about the topics of Sustainability, Climate, Resilience and Digital.

Currently he is working on Carbon Net Zero solutions, Natural Capital and pushing the sustainability agenda for many of the UKs water companies and other Utilities.

Charlotte Taylor

Charlotte is a structural engineer and PhD researcher at the University of Bath where she is part of the Systems and Sustainability Research Group and UKFIRES research team. Her research project titled “Ecologically constrained structural design: what can we build from the zero-carbon resource pool?” is an industry-academia collaboration with structural engineers Whitby Wood. 

Her interests lie in understanding the land and energy systems which support UK construction, and in questioning the material practices which promote ecological justice and building material sovereignty. She is passionate about accessible research and she co-run community workshops in practicing systems change by building from a constrained material, land, and energy resource pool.

Daisy Hessenberger

As a Global Subject Matter Expert - Nature & Biodiversity at Arcadis, Daisy provides thought leadership on the role of nature and specifically Nature-based Solutions (NbS) in working towards an improved quality of life. NbS are actions that protect, manage, and restore ecosystems, while simultaneously providing environmental, social, and economic benefits. In addition to having worked on NbS for the last five years at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Arcadis, she has over seven years of experience in plant sciences and holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge.

Susan Emmett

Will Hawkins

Will is a Senior Lecturer in Structural Engineering Design at the University of Bath and a researcher specialising in the sustainable and efficient use of materials in construction. His work focuses on decarbonising the construction sector, optimising building structures, developing low-carbon building materials, promoting the reuse of existing buildings and components, and assessing environmental impacts through life cycle assessment and embodied carbon analysis.

Before joining academia, Will worked as a Design Engineer at AKT II, contributing to complex building projects and the design of reinforced and prestressed concrete structures. He holds a Master of Engineering (MEng) with Distinction in Civil and Structural Engineering from the University of Cambridge and completed doctoral research at both the University of Bath and the University of Cambridge.

Hannah Gold