Global engagement seed funding leads to a €5.5 million grant

A large collaboration between European and Chinese partners all began with a Global Engagement Funded (GEF) visit.

Dr Aiduan Borrion, UCL Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering (CEGE), met Professor Shenghui Cui from the Chinese Academy of Science Institute for Urban Environment (IUE) at the International Conference on Industrial Ecology in Chicago in June 2017.

Finding much common ground in their research and wanting to collaborate, she applied for GEF to visit Professor Cui in China. This collaboration has now grown and the pair has recently led, and been awarded, a Horizon 2020 grant for €5.5 million (£5 million).

Building sustainability in the catering sector

Our food system is responsible for some of the world’s greatest environmental and societal challenges, from climate change to chronic diseases linked with changes in global diets.

As the trend of eating out increases, catering has a great potential to lead the transition towards more sustainable and healthy food systems.

Dr Borrion is leading a research project using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) based tools to support the design of sustainable and healthy food systems in the catering sector.

LCA is a technique used to assess the environmental impacts associated with all the stages of a product's life from the raw material production, processing, manufacturing, distribution, consumption and end of life.

Her research also incorporates a comprehensive nutritional and health assessment into the LCA of meals.

The research group led by Prof Shenghui Cui has expertise in quantifying the material flow of food systems at city level and has ongoing projects on designing sustainable and healthy food systems in China, also using LCA.

The UCL research looks at a bottom-up approach from the suppliers and caterers stance, and the IUE looks at a city-led approach from the top-down.

A collaboration that has grown from one visit

The Chinese Academy of Science is the world's largest research organisation and was ranked the number one research institute in the world by Nature Publishing Index 2017. The Institute for Urban Environment (IUE) is a comprehensive and multi-disciplinary institution engaged in fundamental and applied research on the cutting edge of environmental and resource sciences, as well as the development of high-tech for environmental remediation and waste management. Their approach to sustainability and use of LCA tools made them a perfect fit for collaboration.

“Dr Borrion said: “The Global Engagement Fund has enabled me to visit the Chinese Academy Science to present my work and learn about Prof Cui and his colleagues’ work. This really helped us establish a collaborative partnership between UCL and IUE and develop a plan for collaboration. The success of H2020 is a direct outcome of this partnership.”

Following the visit, they led an application for a three year €5.5m H2020 project entitled “Novel Organics Recovery Using Mobile ADvanced technology” (NOMAD) involving 14 European Partners and the Chinese Academy of Science. It enables Dr Borrion’s and Prof Cui’s teams to work together to understand the impacts of biofertilizer recovered from biogas effluent on our food systems and environment. They are now planning a student exchange involving their PhD students and Post Doctoral Research Assistants.

 

Links

UCL Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering (CEGE)

Chinese Academy of Science Institute for Urban Environment

Dr Aiduan Borrion academic profile

Professor Shenghui Cui academic profile

CEGE biogas research project awarded €5.5m in Horizon 2020 funding