This month we’re looking at Direction For Change. Cerys, Katie, Ariana and Chanju are here to tell you three different stories of change, from new technology for mapping cities, to changing demand for teachers, and finally the ever-changing future of cars. Listen now as our hosts discuss different directions for change with interesting voices from across the UCL community.

Act 1

Alison Kitson is programme director for UCL’s new Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education (CCCSE) and also works in initial teacher education. Alison joined the Institute of Education in 2008 as a lecturer in education and has worked across a number of roles including Subject Leader for History, Deputy Programme Leader for the secondary PGCE and Faculty Director of Initial Teacher Education.

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.