How will becoming elected to the Royal Academy of Engineering change what you do, or the impact of what you do?
The Royal Academy of Engineering is the UK’s national academy of engineering with the main aim of advancing and promoting excellence in engineering. By becoming a Fellow, I will have greater opportunities to contribute to this goal, and in particular to promoting sustainability in engineering, which is my area of research but also my passion. I also hope to have closer interactions with policy makers and help shape national policy related to the environment and sustainability. Above all, I hope to be able to inspire young people and particularly women to become engineers.

Re: the Sustainable Industrial Systems group – what recent successes has it had? What projects are “in the pipeline”?
Sustainable Industrial Systems is my research group at the University of Manchester. The main aim of our research is to help identify sustainable solutions for industry taking into account economic, environmental and social aspects. We work closely with companies in different sectors including chemicals, construction, energy, food & drink and water.
We have recently been successful in attracting £7m from Research Councils UK to set up a Centre in Sustainable Energy Use in Food Chains. The Centre, a collaborative venture with universities of Brunel (lead), Manchester and Birmingham, will work on developing innovative and sustainable solutions for reducing use of energy and resources in food production and consumption. This will contribute towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions and meeting UK climate change targets.
For more detail on our research visit www.sustainble-systems.org.uk.

If you could “wave a magic wand” what would you change in the way that consumers behave?
If I had a “magic wand”, one thing that I would change regarding consumer behaviour is how we shop for food as that could reduce food waste significantly.
How come and why is food waste important?
Because most people go shopping every two weeks or even once a month, we buy much more food than we can eat before it goes off, then we throw it away and buy more food, and on it goes. In the UK, we throw away 30% of perfectly good food which is responsible for high greenhouse gas emissions and environmental pollution. At the same time, in other parts of the world, people are starving. Surely this is unsustainable. So, if we were to buy food more frequently and just enough for what we can actually eat, then we would minimise food waste which in turn would reduce significantly the environmental impacts from food.

If you could “wave a magic wand” what would you change in the way that research like yours is conducted and feeds through into the world of industry?
I would first want the Government to recognise the importance of research for the national economy and future development and growth – currently, this is not the case and lag in research investment behind many European countries and the US. I would also like to see industry fund research at a greater level rather than expecting Government to provide most of the funding. Finally, I would like to see a greater uptake by industry of sustainable solutions identified and developed through research. So, it would have it be a really big “magic wand”!

This interview appeared in the October 2013 issue of Manchester Climate Monthly, in which we managed to demote the Professor to Doctor, and spelt her first name wrong. These have been corrected for the web version. (You can’t get the staff, you really can’t…)