Inaugural Lecture: Professor Fleur Loveridge, School of Civil Engineering
- Date: Wednesday 1 May 2024, 15:45 – 18:00
- Location: Civil Engineering LT A (1.10)
- Cost: Free
Join us for our next Inaugural Lecture on 1 May as we welcome Fleur Loveridge, Professor of Geo-Energy Engineering at the School of Civil Engineering.
An inaugural lecture is a significant milestone in any academic’s career, recognising their promotion to Professor. It also offers an opportunity for our new professorial colleagues to showcase their work and innovative research with a broad audience, including members of the public, family, friends, and colleagues.
This lecture is part of a new series across the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, celebrating those who have joined the University to offer ever greater teaching, research, and expertise across our eight Schools.
About this lecture
Professor Loveridge’s lecture, “The role of buildings and infrastructure substructures in decarbonising heating and cooling”, will examine dual use of structure and infrastructure foundations as heat sources or stores in addition to their original function, showing their potential to make significant contributions to decarbonisation of heating systems.
Heating and cooling buildings accounts for around one quarter of UK carbon emissions. While our electricity grid has rapidly decarbonised in recent years, very little progress has been made on heating and cooling. Widespread adoption of heat pumps and district heating networks connected to low carbon sources is therefore required. However, capital costs and other more practical barriers remain, hindering the required sector transformation.
One solution to this challenge is to use alternative sources of heat, accessed via structure and infrastructure foundations and other underground construction. Making structures and infrastructure dual use – to obtain heat as well as their original civil engineering function – has the potential to offer both cost savings, and access to heat sources not otherwise available.
This lecture will consider the potential contribution of UK infrastructure to thermal energy demand, explore innovations in analysis methods to assess energy capacity of sub-structures, and examine what other barriers exist to development of sub-structure and infrastructure heat, and what can be done about them.
About our speaker
Fleur Loveridge, Professor of Geo-Energy Engineering at the School of Civil Engineering has 25 years of experience in industry and academia. After obtaining her MSc in Engineering, she worked in practice for a decade on a variety of infrastructure projects including the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, A3 Hindhead improvements, and tenders for new locks on the Panama Canal. She also led applied research and development work for Network Rail on climate and vegetation impacts on railway earthworks. In 2009, she returned to academia and completed a PhD in the performance of ground energy systems installed in foundations.
Since then, she has pioneered the use different sorts of foundation and infrastructure for heat transfer and storage, including via two independent fellowships with the Royal Academy of Engineering and EPSRC.
Fleur is a Chartered Engineer and a Chartered Geologist and has served as task force lead for energy geostructures for the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering Technical Committee on Energy Geotechnics. She is currently the Director of Research and Innovation for the School of Civil Engineering, and a member of the Geosolutions Management Board.
Book your place
The lecture will take place in the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Leeds, with arrival and registration from 3.45pm in the foyer, and the lecture commencing at 4pm in Lecture Theatre A 1.10. This will be followed by a drinks reception in the Civil Engineering foyer from 5pm.
Booking is required to attend this event – you can do so at our dedicated ticket portal. Please book by Monday 29 April.