Joint Venture Between Cambridge U, Kiwi Engineers

Joint Venture Between Cambridge University and Kiwi Engineers Focuses on Sustainability

(Embargoed until 5.00pm, Friday, 7 December, 2007)

A joint venture between prestigious Cambridge University and New Zealand engineers and scientists was launched today, with the aim of promoting sustainable development worldwide.

The venture – announced at The University of Auckland by the NZ Society for Sustainability Engineering and Science – is a major coup for the society.

“While we have always had informal links with Cambridge, they will now become our key partner, enabling further global recognition for the initiatives being taken to achieve sustainability,”says Dr Carol Boyle, the chair of the Society and a Senior Lecturer at Auckland’s Faculty of Engineering.

As part of the joint venture, Cambridge and Auckland universities will host world-renowned conferences in alternate years, with Auckland staging the next conference – Blueprints for Sustainable Infrastructure – in December 2008.

“Politicians can legislate to encourage sustainability and people can take steps to minimise their carbon footprint but it’s the engineers and scientists who develop the practical ways to achieve these measures,” says Dr Boyle.

“These conferences provide the opportunity for business leaders, world-class engineers and scientists and government agencies to get together and assess what action we can all take to reduce our impact on the planet.

“Advances in science and engineering will create, and enhance, the technology, tools and systems required to make the measurable differences,” says Dr Boyle.

With the conference a year away, the Society already has an impressive line-up of speakers confirmed, with more to be announced in the coming months.

Those presenting in 2008 will include:

- Professor Peter Guthrie from Cambridge University’s Centre for Sustainable Development who is working on the London Olympics, a renewable energy scheme across a tidal estuary in northern England and development of 10,000 new homes near London. His previous projects include airport, railway, road and mining schemes around the world and the Channel Tunnel.

- Dr Jean Venables, from Crane Environmental, world leaders in water treatment and purification. She chairs the Thames Estuary 2100 Project.

- Dr Peter Newman, Professor of City Policy and Director of the Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy, at Murdoch University, Western Australia.

- Professor Terry Collins, a New Zealander who is the Thomas Lord Professor of Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University in the United States. Prof Collins is one of the founders of the field of Green Chemistry.

ENDS

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