7 minute read
Meet our researchers
Building a pathway to sustainable travel futures
Having helped shape sustainable transport policy, most notably in his native Greece, Dr Alexandros Nikitas is not resting on his laurels.
Advertisement
Dr Alexandros Nikitas
The Deputy Director of Huddersfield Business School’s Behavioural Research Centre has founded the UK’s first Future Mobility Lab (FML). This interdisciplinary lab will promote the study of sustainable and socially inclusive mobility and connected, shared and alternatively fuelled transport. It is part of the University’s new Sustainable Living Research Centre. It’s a typically innovative move from Dr Nikitas, a Reader in Smart Transport who arrived at Huddersfield in 2015. He combines intensive and influential research with practical engagement with the real world. He was included in Stanford University’s 2020 list of the 2 per cent of scientists with the most citations in academic papers. That desire to see research translated into action saw him serving as a councillor in his home city of Drama for three years from 2011. Athens and Drama are among 12 Greek cities using his active travel research as a compass for their EU-funded Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans. He also works with the Greek government on sustainable transport interventions. Dr Nikitas suggests: ‘The next big challenge we need to be thinking about is climate change. COVID-19 in some ways gave us a blueprint for change – highlighting the importance of developing and promoting sustainable transport.’ In July 2022 he assumes the Chair of the Universities’ Transport Study Group’s Executive Committee – the premier academic forum for transport research and teaching spanning UK and Irish universities. ‘This leadership role’, Dr Nikitas, says, “will offer excellent visibility to the Business School and wider University transport initiatives – making us a toptier transport research hub globally.” As well as publishing more than 90 journal and conference papers, Dr Nikitas has worked with UK councils and city regions and major industrial powerhouses such as Volvo Buses. This applied research portfolio of work includes a pioneering micro-mobility/shared transport project with Kirklees Council. Dr Nikitas is the Associate Editor of the Journal of Transport & Health and an Editorial Board member for another two leading academic journals.
Exploring identity and landscape in photography
Dr Yan Wang
Originally trained in Clinical Medicine in Fudan Preston University, Shanghai, China, and working as an anaesthetist before moving to England in 2005, DrYan Wang Preston took the opportunity of being away from familial pressures to retrain, studying photography at college and university, leading to a PhD awarded in 2018.
Dr Preston is now a senior lecturer at the University of Huddersfield and a practising artist, looking at landscape and identity; how a landscape picture can express a sense of belonging and a sense of place. Her major projects include: ‘Mother River’ (2010-2014), for which she photographed the entire 6,211km Yangtze River in China at precise 100km intervals on a large-format film camera; and ‘Forest’ (2010-2017), for which she investigated the politics of reforestation and ecology recovery in new Chinese cities. Preston considers the Mother River project, completed for her PhD, to be her breakthrough into fine art photography, “It allowed me to use that time to develop my practice by doing a very ambitious and challenging project, but also to develop my knowledge, particularly in landscape photography. From this I built a very solid foundation to continue working as a fine art photographer, and it was the beginning to seeing how academic research looks in an artistic context.” Dr Preston’s work has won major international awards such as the Shiseido Photographer Prize at the Three Shadows Photography Annual Award in Beijing, China (2016), the First Prize, Professional Commission, Syngenta Photography Award (2017), Hundred Heroines, the Royal Photographic Society (2018), and the First Prize, Professional Landscape, Sony World Photography Awards (2019). Despite these many accolades, Dr Preston has a wider view of the highlight of her career: “It could be the opening of my solo exhibitions, or when I won the Professional Landscape Award from Sony. But the truthful answer is that the highlight is when I finally stood at the river mouth of the Yangtze River, having made the journey across the whole of China, to learn about my homeland and myself, that is the highlight of not just my career but my whole life.”
Lively minds – a movement to enhance early years
Dr Liane
A child’s early experiences, their physical and emotional Azevedo development have been shown to determine how well they do in school and in life. Much of Dr Liane Azevedo’s more recent work has been looking at what factors impact school readiness, such as their motor development and sedentary behaviours, which could be impacted by the growth of digital technologies and multiple lockdowns over recent years.
Dr Azevedo arrived at Public Health via the scenic route, starting off as a triathlete in her native Brazil, she was a South American champion in 1991. Her interest in health and physical activity was established early on, eventually leading her to Cape Town where she studied for her PhD in Biomechanics. The focus and scope of her work has expanded as it has progressed, initially studying running injuries in a lab, through controlled testing – work that impacted a niche group of the population. She moved into Public Health which, she explains is much messier, when looking at a whole population there are multiple factors to consider, and more complex interventions are required. However, the scale of the impact of her work feels much greater, with the research and guidance she’s involved in informing policy and contributing to long term changes in attitudes and behaviour. Dr Azevedo’s has worked on several systematic reviews providing evidence to practice and policy and clear guidance for diet, physical and behavioural interventions for obesity in children. Her recent work is highly collaborative, working with policy makers, local nurseries, teachers and parents to investigate to use of mobile devices and their impact on child development. ‘I can already see parents are confused’, says Dr Azevedo, “although they believe it is important to prepare children for the digital age and offer learning opportunities, they are concerned that children displace active play in favour of use of these technologies. On the other hand, experienced teachers have said that children’s communication skills and self-regulation has been impacted by the increase in technology use. I can see more work needs to be done to help parents and carers with guidance around use of digital devices for younger children.” She has also established research collaborations globally through her projects, she is involved in the SUNRISE Project, an international study of physical activity bringing together researchers from low, medium and high-income countries. She is keen to understand the impact of COVID and digital technologies on young children’s development in Brazil and contribute to guidance for improvements.
Dr Shahzad
After years mixing teaching and research, Dr Shahzad Hasan Hasan was pleased to arrive at the University of Huddersfield in September 2017 as a research fellow in pharmacy practice.
Little did he know that three years later he would be on television commenting on the medicine consumption of the most controversial American president of modern times. “Back in 2020 there wasn’t really any effective and safe treatment for Covid-19. Between March and May 2020 President Trump was promoting Hydroxychloroquine to prevent getting Covid and that it might be a cure. We decided we had a responsibility to do the research given the safety concerns. We knew we had the skills to produce evidence in the form of research articles. “My expertise is looking at the safety of medicines. I and my research group synthesise the evidence and publish that in the form of research papers and guidelines for clinicians. I published a paper on Hydroxychloroquine at the end of March 2020 saying it should only be used under close monitoring in hospital because of the risk of associated cardiac problems.” That work led to an international range of broadcasters and journalists beating a path to his door. He also worked on TV programmes in Pakistan about Covid-related drug safety. Dr Hasan was promoted to Senior Research Fellow in 2019. In his four years at the University, he has been its most prolific author, with more than 100 papers published on COVID-19 alone. As he notes himself, the pandemic has driven that prodigious output – both because of more time “sitting at home during lockdowns” and the demand for expert advice on the safety of potential Covid-19 treatments. The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology and The British Medical Journal Best Practice are among those to publish and cite his work. Such research – and his teaching – draws on his early years working as a hospital pharmacist in Karachi before he went into teaching, quickly combining that with research. His career path is a global one with stints in Malaysia, Australia and Glasgow. In December 2021 he secured the award for the best research article around health economics from the International Society for Health Economics and Outcomes Research.
