23rd May 2011
We are delighted to announce that one of our PhD students, Marcos Pelenur, was awarded a 2011 Dow Sustainability Innovation Prize. The Dow Chemical Company awarded three prizes, which aimed to celebrate the energy, commitment and enthusiasm of sustainability students and their supervisors. Marcos' award was based on his interdisciplinary PhD research, which investigates the social and technical context of domestic energy retrofits, in order to improve the efficiency of the UK built environment. He combines sociology methods with an engineering focus, looking for the first time at the social factors affecting domestic energy use.
We are also pleased to announce that based on his Public Policy essay contribution to the St. Gallen Wings of Excellence Award, Marcos was also selected as a 'Leader of Tomorrow', and invited to participate in the 41st St. Gallen Symposium in Switzerland. 200 Leaders of Tomorrow were selected from around the world to participate at the week long symposium, along with 600 outstanding personalities from the fields of business, politics, science and society. Marcos' essay was titled: “Decentralising public goods and protecting society values: a role for community empowerment.”