Dr Marco-Felipe King

Profile

My research asks a single question in several settings: where does exposure actually happen, and what changes it?

Airborne transmission in healthcare environments. I use high-fidelity CFD alongside bioaerosol sampling in occupied wards to characterise how pathogen-laden particles disperse from a source and where susceptible people encounter them. Ward geometry, bed spacing, ventilation strategy and patient activity all shift the answer, and the differences are large enough to matter clinically.

Surface and hand-mediated exposure. Airborne routes rarely act alone. Working with colleagues in mathematical biology and public health, I build quantitative microbial risk assessment models of contact behaviour, who touches what, in what sequence, and how much dose accumulates, to compare the contribution of surface pathways against inhalation and to test where hand hygiene and cleaning effort is best spent.

Evaluating interventions in the real world. Ventilation upgrades, portable air cleaners and germicidal ultraviolet including far-UVC are widely deployed on thin evidence. I work with NHS estates teams and technology developers to assess these under realistic conditions, including unintended consequences and the trade-offs that arise when an intervention shifts risk rather than removing it.

Computational methods for indoor and urban airflow. I develop and apply GPU-accelerated lattice-Boltzmann and finite-volume approaches to flows at building and street scale, including work on pedestrian-level wind around tall buildings.

Responsibilities

• Director of the Water, Public Health and Environmental Engineering Research Group
• Programme Director of MSc Environmental Engineering and Project Management
• Co-Director of Healthy Buildings Network

Research interests

My research asks a single question in several settings: where does exposure actually happen, and what changes it? I direct the Water, Public Health and Environmental Engineering group, and my own work sits in its indoor air quality and airborne infection strand.

Airborne transmission in healthcare environments. I use high-fidelity CFD alongside bioaerosol sampling in occupied wards to characterise how pathogen-laden particles disperse from a source and where susceptible people encounter them. Ward geometry, bed spacing, ventilation strategy and patient activity all shift the answer, and the differences are large enough to matter clinically. This strand grew out of HECOIRA, which brought engineers together with clinicians and NHS estates teams, and the partnerships it established still shape the work.

Surface and hand-mediated exposure. Airborne routes rarely act alone. Working with colleagues in mathematical biology and public health, I build quantitative microbial risk assessment models of contact behaviour, who touches what, in what sequence, and how much dose accumulates, to compare the contribution of surface pathways against inhalation and to test where hand hygiene and cleaning effort is best spent.

Evaluating interventions in the real world. Ventilation upgrades, portable air cleaners and germicidal ultraviolet including far-UVC are widely deployed on thin evidence. I work with NHS estates teams and technology developers to assess these under realistic conditions, including unintended consequences and the trade-offs that arise when an intervention shifts risk rather than removing it. Recent work on far-UVC appears in Building and Environment.

Computational methods for indoor and urban airflow. I develop and apply GPU-accelerated lattice-Boltzmann and finite-volume approaches to flows at building and street scale, including pedestrian-level wind around tall buildings and the indoor–outdoor exchange work begun on REFRESH.

Much of this happens through networks rather than single projects. I co-direct the Healthy Buildings Network, which connects academic and industry work on healthier built environments, and the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Future Fluid Dynamics, which trains researchers across computational, experimental and applied settings.

A full list of publications is available on Google Scholar.

Co-investigator (Co-I)

• TRACK: Transport Risk Assessment for COVID Knowledge

Qualifications

• PhD University of Leeds (2013)
• MSc University of Leeds (2009)
• BSc Durham University (2008)

Professional memberships

• Infection Prevention Society
• Healthcare Infection Society
• UKIEG Treasurer
• FHEA

Student education

I teach across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in civil and environmental engineering, principally in fluid mechanics, building environmental engineering, and the environmental determinants of health. My teaching draws directly on live research: students work with the same simulation tools and risk-assessment frameworks used in the group's funded projects.

I hold programme-level responsibility for environmental engineering provision in the School, and I co-direct doctoral training in fluid dynamics, where my focus is on building cohorts that can move between computational, experimental and applied health contexts.

I supervise doctoral researchers on computational, experimental and mixed-method projects. I welcome enquiries from candidates with backgrounds in fluid dynamics, applied mathematics, civil or environmental engineering. Computational projects assume or build competence in CFD and scientific programming; experimental projects prioritise laboratory skills instead.

Postgraduate research opportunities

We welcome enquiries from motivated and qualified applicants from all around the world who are interested in PhD study. Our research opportunities allow you to search for projects and scholarships.

Research groups and institutes

• Water, Public Health and Environmental Engineering
• Cities, Infrastructure and Energy