S3 Ep3: Direction For Change

MORE ON THE STORIES

Act 2

Polly Hudson is a Senior Research Fellow at The Alan Turing Institute and project lead for the Colouring Cities Research Programme. She is also a senior research fellow at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, UCL where she developed the Colouring Cities concept as part of her PhD. Polly trained as an architectural historian and cabinet maker, working initially in historic building restoration, slide library design and community planning. In 1991 she directed and designed the Building of Bath Museum and in 1996 set up The Building Exploratory charitable trust in London as a prototype for free, hand-on centres providing joined-up information about the local building stock, built by and for local communities.  Here she also began to test designs for public facing GIS platforms able to collate and visualise current, and historical, building attribute data. Since this time she has continued to develop physical and digital educational tools to increase public information about the building stock, and to promote multisector collaboration across the humanities, science, and the arts. Polly has held public appointments at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, English Heritage, The Royal Institute of British Architects, and The National Lottery. 

Polly is part of the Computer Vision and Digital Heritage SIG, and the Facilitating Participation in Data Science SIG at Turing. She is also a member of the Digital Twin Hub Community Council.

Act 3

Robin Ramphal started working for the UCL Department of Chemical Engineering in January 2018 as a temporary Departmental Manager, which lasted just over a year. The role involved having an oversight of all activities within the department, e.g. Staff, Finance and Safety. After that, he secured a position within the same department as a Strategic Alliances Manager/Director, lasting 3 years. Within the scope of the role, he worked with Academic and industry on collaboration, funding studentships and building networks and relationship. 

Currently, he is Project Integrator for the UCL Hydrogen Innovation Network, within the Electrochemical Innovation Lab, working to develop high-impact network within the Hydrogen sector, so engaging with industry and government bodies. Essentially, his role is to organise, chair and host hydrogen events and workshops to discuss the H2 landscape, knowledge exchange, building relationships, which leads to collaboration on R&D projects, with a view of UCL leading on developing a London’s first Hydrogen Park
 

Alex Rettie is a Lecturer in Electrochemical Energy Conversion and Storage at University College London (UCL) Chemical Engineering since January 2019. His interests span batteries, green hydrogen production and use. Prior to joining UCL, he was a post-doc at Argonne National Laboratory where he focused on materials design and total scattering techniques. He received his Ph.D. (Chemical Engineering) from the University of Texas at Austin in 2015, investigating metal oxide photoelectrodes and his M.Eng. degree (Chemical Engineering) from the University of Edinburgh.

TRANSCRIPT

Cerys Bradley  00:05

Hello and welcome to series three of #MadeAtUCL, the podcast.

Cerys Bradley  00:09

My name is Cerys Bradley and I'm here to share with you UCL's groundbreaking research and its impact on the world. Each month the #MadeAtUCL team and I will be exploring a research theme and gathering stories from all over the UCL community to try and understand it.

Cerys Bradley  00:25

In our third episode of the series, we chose Direction For Change as our theme. This is quite a difficult theme to articulate. A lot of the stories we cover on #MadeAtUCL the podcast are about change. We talk to lots of academics whose research is changing the world by bringing in new technologies or approaches or ideas. But the stories we have today aren't just about changing how we do things. They speak to fundamental shifts in how we see the world.

Cerys Bradley  00:50

This month, the team has spoken to researchers who are thinking big and looking to the future and trying to build a whole new way of engaging with it. From equipping the next generation in the fight against climate change to reimagining cities as centers for sustainability, to developing new technologies and a new research environment built on collaboration and innovation. We have three incredible stories of UCL research not only changing the world, but creating the tools that will direct that change.

Cerys Bradley  01:17

I feel like there has been a lot of change recently, a lot of big changes in the past month and sometimes everything starts to feel quite chaotic. Which is why it has been very comforting to hear from people who have a plan, who are thinking about long term sustainability and how to build for the future. In our first story we hear from Chanju Mwanza, an MA student in Education, Gender and International Development, as she explores a project at the Institute of Education, a new resource hub for teachers to help empower their students in the climate change conversation.

Vanessa Nakate  01:53

When I realized that there was communities in my country that were facing devastating impacts of climate change, that is when I decided that I had to do something about it.

Greta Thunberg  02:07

When I was about eight years old, I first heard about something called climate change, or global warming,

Priyanka Lalla  02:15

Young people feel a sense of disappointment, devastation and even a burden.

Multiple voices  02:21

What do we want? Climate Justice! When do we want it? NOW!

Chanju Mwanza  02:32

Climate change is a global issue that impacts each of our lives. But we can't ignore the fact that it impacts each one of us differently. And in an equal measures. The voices we just heard represent a snapshot of global youth who are vocal about climate change from Vanessa Nakate and Greta Thunberg, to Priyanka Lalla, and the collective voice of young people protesting in the UK. For me, all these voices represent anger, frustration, empathy, and passion.

Chanju Mwanza  03:07

I'm currently studying education, gender and international development. And so my particular interest is in how these voices and that of the young people that we don't get to hear from can be turned into action through an education that draws from societies around the world that put environmental justice at the heart of learning. But how do these voices and feelings translate into our day to day lives? How can young people continue to be empowered to get involved in climate justice without exacerbating feelings of eco anxiety? And what can we learn from other communities, societies and indigenous knowledge around the world when it comes to teaching about climate justice? I spoke to Dr. Alison Kitson about these issues.

Alison Kitson  03:53

I'm an associate professor at the Institute of Education at UCL and I am the program director for the new Center for Climate Change and Sustainability Education. We launched the center in April, so we're still quite new.

Chanju Mwanza  04:13

First, I wanted to explore the issue of eco anxiety. We've seen that young people around the world are united in the fight for climate justice. And earlier this year, the Center for Climate Change and Sustainability Education commissioned a poll of parents, which revealed that climate change is one of the topics that their children are most likely to talk to them about it. It's an issue that's on so many young people's minds.

Voice #1  04:36

If I don't think the future is worth anything, then I'm not going to have children if I think it is worth something. I will have children.

Voice #2  04:41

We are already seeing coastal city flooding. We're already seeing forest fires. We're already seeing flash floods. We're seeing tornadoes, when big ecological disasters happen around the world. I feel a sense of anxiety, I feel a sense of sadness, and a sense of loss.

Alison Kitson  05:02

We do know that eco anxiety exists. We know from research that's been carried out already, that a lot of teachers don't feel prepared. And don't feel confident to teach about these issues, there was a piece of research carried out by a great student led organization called Teach the Future, which found that about 70% of teachers don't feel they've had much training in this area. And we've held focus groups with teachers who've said, you know, they're worried that by teaching these issues, they might exacerbate student anxiety or exacerbate students misunderstandings. There's this quite interesting tension between, you know, parents saying, Look, schools need to be the ones that are leading on this and teaching our children. And then on the other hand, you've got teachers saying, or some teachers saying, I don't feel prepared.

Chanju Mwanza  05:49

In a context where social media and the news is saturated with events caused by climate change. It's understandable why there is a very real feeling of eco anxiety amongst young people. And often in times of uncertainty, young people will look for answers from trusted adults in their lives, for example, teachers who are seen as a beacon of knowledge. So one solution to help ease the sense of eco anxiety, and ensure that young people have the right information, when thinking about climate change, is to support teachers to be confident in teaching about these issues. And that's what the new Center for Climate Change and Sustainability Education aims to do.

Alison Kitson  06:26

So the core mission of the center is to provide all teachers in secondary schools and primary schools, and that's teachers across all subject areas, with a place they can go to access, high quality, research-informed and free support, about embedding climate change and sustainability in their teaching. We're really committed to seeing this as a whole curriculum issue. So you know, geography teacher, science teachers will already touch on issues of climate change and sustainability in their teaching. But we firmly believe that because this is a theme that touches all aspects of our lives, right, you can't compartmentalize it as just, this is just about geography. This is just about science. So what we wanted to do in the center was to provide a place that, you know, if you're a fairly new English teacher in a secondary school, there will be something for you.

Chanju Mwanza  07:22

And the resources being produced aren't limited to the online world, the new center will include not just resources, but also courses and podcasts, a whole suite of products and projects aimed at supporting teachers at all levels of schooling, from primary right through to secondary.

Alison Kitson  07:37

And ultimately, of course, it's about helping teachers to support young people. So you know, the ultimate kind of audience for this, if you like, or consumer of it, or however you want to describe it, are young people themselves in primary and secondary schools.

Chanju Mwanza  07:56

But in a context where there are growing youth led movements around these issues, rising feelings of anxiety or worry about climate change, is it fair that young people are taking on the burden of campaigning for climate justice? Are we further burdening young people with responsibilities of a mess that they didn't create?

Alison Kitson  08:14

Something that's actually another academic at UCL, Helen Czerski, talked about when I spoke to her in the autumn, which was, you know, we must be really careful that we don't give the impression to young people that in a sense, we're just handing it all over to them for them to fix. Because that's not, that's not fair. And actually, as Helen, you know, pointed out really eloquently. There have been some, you know, a lot of very clever people working on this for a long time. And we know that solutions exist, what doesn't exist is necessarily the will to implement those solutions. That's a really, really important message for children to get. So you know, the last thing we want to happen as a result of of our work in the center is for young people to say not another lesson about climate change or not another lesson about sustainability. So again, you know, that raises issues for us about how we frame all of this, and how schools keep track of everything that's happening, so that there isn't a kind of overload and that, you know, schools are conscious of the messages that young people are getting over their, their whole kind of lifetime at school.

Chanju Mwanza  09:18

Eco anxiety is a real concern for the Center for climate change and sustainability education. As such, the resources are designed to include and empower young people in the conversation. And this made me think about other areas of inclusivity. I have my own reservations about climate activism, sometimes the way it can privilege Western and affluent voices, the times it's felt out of touch or seem to target the people who are affected by climate change, rather than those with the power to make the change.

Chanju Mwanza  09:56

It's in these situations that I think about how we as a society in the West can learn from others around the world, and how we organize and think about issues like climate change in relation to those around us, and to ensure that everyone can be included in the dialogue. For example, the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu forefronts, our moral obligations towards others, including past, present and future generations, as well as our relationship and responsibility to the environment. And that means learning from the various spaces that we occupy, I was interested in whether the center had considered alternative pedagogical styles, as part of its work in reframing the day to day relationship that young people have with a nature around them. Or, as the saying goes, how nature can be our best teacher.

Alison Kitson  10:42

And there are there are indigenous peoples around the world who, who haven't ever really lost that connection with with nature. And you know, that that's a whole other sort of really interesting area to explore with young people. I think increasingly, we're trying to break down that barrier of human beings and nature, you know, we are part of nature. And, you know, how, how can that be reflected in what we teach, I'm a historian, and we haven't taught school history through an environmental lens very much until now, the other thing, of course, that we're really interested in is not just how we learn, but where we learn. So what is the role of learning outside? Or how can we bring the outside inside? If, if, if that's what's available, but how can we actually get kids to learn in an you know, within nature. So that's going to be a really interesting part of what we do.

Chanju Mwanza  11:41

Reflecting back to my conversation with Alison, this could have been a whole hour long discussion about bringing in indigenous philosophies around the world that focus on education through nature, and our responsibilities to the environment. As someone who spent their earliest years growing up between Zambia and Cote d'Ivoire my being outside and immersed in nature was a huge part of my day to day life and education. I remember being shocked by how much we were disconnected from the environment around us at school in the UK. And I think for a global issue like climate change, having institutions like this center presents an opportunity to forefront and learn from the pedagogical methods of other societies that have fostered this strong relationship with nature for centuries. It's an opportunity to disrupt ideas that indigenous knowledge forms from around the world don't fit into our context in the UK.

Chanju Mwanza  12:36

The Center for Climate Change and Sustainability Education is just at the start of its own journey. It has a mammoth task ahead of it, and progress is being made. The center will be launching a big survey for teachers across the country in the autumn term and its pilot Teacher Education Support Package begins with history and geography, before rolling out to all subjects.

Alison Kitson  12:57

The distinctive contribution of the new center is that we're aiming to reach all teachers, there will be resources, but our resources will be mediated through some kind of training provision, and it will be flexible training that teachers can engage with. It will be informed by best pedagogy and different subject areas, you know, we're really confident that we can do that.

Chanju Mwanza  13:18

And as for young people themselves.

Alison Kitson  13:20

So we're already talking to young people in focus groups. We're setting up a youth panel in the autumn. And you know, we will do our absolute best to try and get as representative a group as possible from across the country. I mean, actually, the voice of teachers and young people are going to be really critical to what we do.

Chanju Mwanza  13:39

My hope is that through centering young people's perspectives, the anger, frustration, empathy and passion that young people can feel about climate injustice can be transformed into action for a future where climate justice and activism is inclusive and responsive to the needs of people all over the world.

Cerys Bradley  14:07

Speaking of large scale projects that provide everything you need to know to create a more sustainable future. Up next is Katie Davies, a final year student studying history, politics and economics, with a story about a new and colorful way to explore cities.

Katie Davies  14:26

Buildings and building construction are responsible for around 40% of global energy use. In a city as vast and complex as London. How do we even begin to measure the energy being produced by buildings, let alone consider the ways to reduce it? Imagine if we had

Polly Hudson  14:43

an open database which provides information on the building stock so that anybody who's involved in trying to improve the efficiency of the stock, its quality, sustainability or resilience can access data.

Katie Davies  14:56

This is Polly Hudson, a senior research fellow at the Center for Advanced Spatial Analysis at UCL and the Alan Turing Institute. Polly leads the Colouring Cities Project, which sets to address the lack of data available on buildings in order to aid sustainability by answering questions such as,

Polly Hudson  15:14

What kind of buildings have we got where? You know, how old are they? How tall are they? And we also need to know how long they've lasted. We need to look at how adaptable they are, how likely they are to last a long time. We need to look at their potential for retrofit, we can't move forward in a way that's sustainable, because it's like, you know, unless you can actually work out how many of what you've got, and where are they. It's very, actually very difficult to work out to answer questions like what's going to be happening in the future, because you don't even know what you've got in the first place.

Katie Davies  15:45

In order to answer such big questions, Polly and her team have taken a fully multidisciplinary approach.

Polly Hudson  15:51

We're trying to create a visual system that link science, humanities, an the arts.

Katie Davies  15:57

This combination is incredibly powerful.

Polly Hudson  16:00

So when you start to visualize, and you work with colour specialists, and use graphic designers, and then you work with people in the humanities, who understand the dynamics of cities, you know, and then you combine that with scientists who understand you know, the energy efficiency or the structural side, you know, engineering guys or whatever.

Katie Davies  16:19

The result is fantastic, a colour coded map of London that visually presents the data gathered, creating a knowledge base that will help facilitate sustainable urban development. For me, the best part is that anyone can get involved and help develop the open database by adding in information. As such, the map acts as a giant coloured jigsaw puzzle that is gradually pieced together with each piece of data added colouring the buildings.

Katie Davies  16:55

A project of this scale is only possible through collaboration. And Polly and her team have worked on an international scale.

Polly Hudson  17:03

We're looking at work across 10 countries that anybody can use our code, our stuff is free and this is absolutely critical for allowing us to work with other countries. But basically the countries take the code and then they apply it in their own context.

Katie Davies  17:10

I couldn't help but notice that while the project is centered around wholly physical spaces, it is ironically, online and remote collaboration that has been vital to the project.

Polly Hudson  17:27

We couldn't obviously work across countries in this way without, you know, working on Teams and Zoom and stuff like that. Our project really accelerated during COVID. And, and we noticed that many people were wanting to collaborate more, it's absolutely critical to sit down over coffee if you can with people, because the physical contact you have in a one to one discussion is very different from online.

Katie Davies  17:53

Founded in 2016, the Colouring Cities Project has been going on for seven years. Despite the length of the project Polly's enthusiasm and passion for the project shone through. So what I wanted to find out was how Polly has kept engaged with the project, given its length.

Polly Hudson  18:09

I feel we've only just started. I've always been kind of fascinated by how very simple structures can be built on to produce very sort of, you know, complex systems or, or complex databases or whatever it might be. The periodic table always fascinated me, because it was a graphic, you know, visual, very clear graphic, in which all these elements, you know, the attributes were ordered in a particular way. But where at the time, electrons hadn't even been identified. And yet, the way they were ordered could predict the number of electrons in the shell.

Katie Davies  18:50

To me, this metaphor emulated the Colouring Cities Project perfectly, as this concept of turning something incredibly complicated into something simplistic, is at its center.

Polly Hudson  19:02

And that's my interest. Our project is there to facilitate other things, good things take a long time to build, you know, and simple things take a long time to make.

Katie Davies  19:21

As simple as Polly claims the Colouring Cities Project is it's creating big changes.

Polly Hudson  19:27

Nothing ever stays the same. It gives great hope because if you've got a positive situation, you can make it even better. And if you have a negative situation, you know, it's never going to last. It's never always going to be the same do you know what I mean? You can you're always going to be moving and you have to be able in academia to welcome that, you have to be able to be excited by that.

Katie Davies  19:50

To me, the Colouring Cities Project encompasses everything positive about change. It has demonstrated that with the right collaboration, permanent high quality low cost open databases on buildings can be easily and cheaply built and maintained for cities and countries. The Colouring Cities Project is a fantastic knowledge base that will ultimately facilitate future sustainable urban development.

Cerys Bradley  20:15

The Colouring Cities Project is an exceptional piece of research. However, its collaborative and innovative approach is one that we see across UCL and one that is built into the new UCL Campus in East London. To learn more about UCL East and one of the departments that will be moving there in the autumn Ariana Razavi, a second year philosophy students spoke to two people involved in the Advanced Propulsion Lab, which is a global centre of excellence dedicated to the decarbonisation of the transport sector specialising in battery and fuel cell electric vehicles.

Ariana Razavi  21:08

UCL is really paving the way in terms of sustainable energy, especially in the use of hydrogen. But what does that actually mean? And what does the future of sustainable energy look like? I heard about this UCL project from my brother, who's a high school student and notice that while I am very interested in sustainability, I don't really have enough background knowledge to know what innovation is happening in the field. So I was especially excited to sit down with Dr. Alex Rettie and Robin Ramphal, to hear more about hydrogen as a source of energy.

Robin Ramphal  21:45

Hi, my name is Robin Ramphal. I work for the Electric Chemical Innovation Lab, but more specifically for the Chemical Engineering Department as well. I'm a project integrator for hydrogen and I work on the UCL Hydrogen Innovation Network project.

Alex Rettie  21:59

I'm Alex Rettie. I'm an assistant professor in Chemical Engineering here at UCL. So my research area at UCL I do research and teaching on sustainable technologies, and especially those concerned with batteries and with hydrogen. And with Robin and colleagues from Mechanical and Chemical Engineering here at UCL, I'm leading the hydrogen Innovation Network. And just like Robin, I'm heavily involved in the Electrochemical Innovation Lab and the Advanced Propulsion Lab, which is upcoming at UCL east.

Ariana Razavi  22:33

What are you working on in terms of hydrogen? How can it, how can it be used?

Alex Rettie  22:38

I would say hydrogen plays a pretty unique role in the various sort of sustainable technologies that we're trying to bring in and make widespread, but also, you know, we see it played a really big role in sort of heavier transport. So things like, you know, freight, things like maybe construction and large vehicles like that. But uniquely hydrogen can also fit right into industrial production of chemicals, and can be used, for example, in green steelmaking, which would just be really hard to decarbonize any other way.

Robin Ramphal  23:09

We want to get to net to meet net zero. So you know, we're trying to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. And that's where hydrogen comes in as a big player, a key player, along with batteries, and other forms of electrification. For example, I use a UCL car, a Toyota Mirai, and it uses hydrogen and emits zero emissions. So there's no pollution pollution within the atmosphere. It's just a liquid that comes out of water at the end.

Ariana Razavi  23:40

That's all so exciting to hear. So considering it might be our future, what is it like driving a hydrogen car?

Alex Rettie  23:50

You really don't notice that you're driving a sort of hydrogen vehicle until you go to fill it up, which is, you know, really, really straightforward, once you get to the refilling station.

Robin Ramphal  24:00

Yeah it's brilliant because even on the dashboard, you can see the when you're using hydrogen, or when you're using the battery and fuel cells. It gives you a reading, a live reading of every time you press the pedals or when you release the pedals. And like Alex said, it drives just like a normal electric car, and fueling it up is exactly like a normal car as you would right now, it just filling it from using a pump that goes into the tank. And unlike electric vehicles, it only takes about five minutes to actually fuel up.

Ariana Razavi  24:33

I've always considered things like hydrogen cars to be the stuff of science fiction. They're a nice idea, but will never really be real. However, it's starting to look like they might actually be the future of transport.

Alex Rettie  24:47

I think it has a has a role to play and ultimately, we'll have a portfolio of technologies that help us you know, move towards sustainable technologies in every sector. I mean, on the roads already, we can see electric vehicles, you know, we're just walking around London, battery electric vehicles are really winning the day when it comes to automotive transport. And so I think it'd be really probably just foolish on my part to bet against that at this point, it was a pretty critical mass behind that. But hydrogen, like I said, plays a different role. So, you know, in terms of heavier vehicles, and for things like marine and for these chemical processes that I mentioned, for residential heating, I mean, these are these are things where hydrogen can really make a difference.

Ariana Razavi  25:30

So, we know there are other sustainable energy options, but hydrogen seems to play a unique role. Why is it so special?

Alex Rettie  25:37

Yeah, you know, most abundant element in the universe, right? It's been around forever. But yeah, it's, it's very light, you know, it's a, it has a lot of advantages when it comes to an as an energy carrier. We've had such a long, you know, decades, I would say, maybe even longer than that, of research into hydrogen technologies, things like fuel cells, things like electrolyzers, that can produce hydrogen. So yeah, it's sort of its abundance and then some of its key chemical characteristics make it really attractive for things like transport but but also these other applications.

Robin Ramphal  26:09

The war with Russia and Ukraine has given more impetus and more urgency that we need to move away from fossil fuels, and reduce our reliance on other countries as well, in terms of getting energy. Where most countries or some countries, as a matter of fact, have access to gas and oil. With hydrogen it's everywhere. Every country has a level playing field now to harvest or produce hydrogen and be able to trade hydrogen in the future.

Ariana Razavi  26:43

So hydrogen is the future. But there's still a lot of work to be done in this area. And that's what makes Alex and Robin's work so vital. There's another really exciting part of this project. And that's that it's in the process of moving to a brand new UCL campus in East London, opening its doors for the first time this coming academic year. I asked Alex and Robin, what they're most excited for in the move, and how it will lend itself to their research.

Alex Rettie  27:11

East London allows us to do things that you just can't do in a central Bloomsbury campus, especially because we're really packed to the rafters here, sort of as it is. So the UCL East division is incredibly exciting. And it's there're various buildings and various sort of things up there are coming online, as we speak, the thing that you UCL East I think, really is, it's sort of unique in is that it'll give us, you know, our own roads, that we have our own canal to some extent, and we'll have our own airspace as well. Right? So I mean, in terms of being a living lab, where, you know, we're really looking at the next generation of propulsion technologies and sustainable technologies, I just can't think of any where better.

Robin Ramphal  27:49

And what UCL is bringing as well, it's a completely new level of inclusive inclusivity to the east bank, we are talking technology, innovation, cutting edge research at scale/ UCL East is bringing life by widening its reach, it's being more engaging, connecting with local businesses, schools and community is connecting the whole of London and further out. So we're all very excited in what's going to be happening there, over the next year.

Alex Rettie  28:20

You know, we we do a lot of great science at UCL. But ultimately, you know, usually we're looking at small scale, maybe atomistic things, you know, we can't drive a vehicle into the lab and test it. But we will be able to do that at UCL East. And that brings sort of other people into the conversation that maybe wouldn't have been so involved in the past. So you know, big industrial consortium, we're already very industry facing as it is, but this will be at a different level, in terms of students interacting with people from industry, working with industry, industry projects, as well as government, you know, so I think, yeah, bringing all these things together is something that that UCL East can really uniquely do. And I, I am I'm jealous of our students to be honest. I mean, I don't the the sort of, you know, networks that can be built and the kinds of projects that they're going to be able to work on is really unparalleled.

Ariana Razavi  29:13

Amazing. So, what's next,

Robin Ramphal  29:15

We would love to have the opportunity to continue with this. I mean, the hydrogen space and the whole production and generating hydrogen into infrastructure. It's a 20, 30, 40 year project, globally. So we want to be there at the forefront leading on this as well.

Alex Rettie  29:35

That's absolutely right. I mean, energy is the one of the big problems of our time, you know, this is no hyperbole really in that statement. And yeah, I think it's incredibly important to work on, it's interesting to work on and yeah, come to UCL East and then get your MSc and get started I say!

Ariana Razavi  29:55

It seems that both in the long term with the widespread use of hydrogen and in the shortterm with new opportunities at UCL East, there's a lot to be excited about.

Cerys Bradley  30:12

One day, we might live in a world that runs on clean hydrogen energy. And we might get there because of a generation of climate activists who have the resources they needed to advocate for themselves and our planet. One day, we might revolutionize the cities we live in, and we'll be able to do that because of a simple idea that let us understand their environmental impact. One day the world might look completely different and the direction of that change is being set by research here at UCL.

Cerys Bradley  30:36

Thank you for listening to the third episode of season three. We'll be back next month with more stories from the UCL community. In the meantime, if you want further information on any of the projects featured in today's episode, you can check the show notes for links, pictures and more.

Cerys Bradley  30:54

You have been listening to #MadeAtUCL, the podcast to listen to previous episodes or find out more about life at UCL visit www.ucl.ac.uk/made-at-UCL or subscribe wherever you listen to this podcast. This episode was presented by myself Cerys Bradley with stories from Chanju Mwanza, Katie Davies and Ariana Razavi.

Cerys Bradley  31:15

It was produced by Halle McCarthy with support from UCL and featured theme music from the Blue Dot Sessions. For a full list of audio credits, please see the show notes.

Cerys Bradley  31:24

Special thanks to Alison, Polly, Alex and Robin for sharing their research with us. This podcast is brought to you by UCL Minds bringing together UCL knowledge, insights and expertise through events, digital content and activities that are open to everyone. See you next month.