Professor Rajat Gupta, Oxford Brookes University

Rajat Gupta, Director, Oxford Institute for Sustainable Development (OISD) and Low Carbon Building Research Group, Oxford Brookes University
Rajat Gupta is Director of the multi-disciplinary Oxford Institute for Sustainable Development (OISD) and Low Carbon Building Research Group at Oxford Brookes University (UK). He holds a senior professorial chair in sustainable architecture and climate change. Rajat’s research interests lie in decarbonising the building sector through energy efficiency, renewables and smart energy systems; local energy mapping for scaling up energy retrofits; and climate change adaptation with a focus on monitoring and modelling the risk of building overheating. As Principal Investigator (PI) he has won over £13 million in research grants from UK Research Councils (EPSRC, ESRC, NERC), Innovate UK and EU to investigate these subjects.

Rajat is Co-Investigator on a NERC funded nationwide study on climate resilience of care settings (ClimaCare). Previously he was leader of a Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) funded study on ‘Care provision fit for a future climate’. Rajat is Principal Investigator (PI) of a £1.3 million EPSRC-DST Newton Fund sponsored RESIDE project on residential building energy demand reduction in India (2017-2023). He is also Co-Investigator on the £9 million EPSRC EnergRev project on scaling up smart local energy systems and PI of the £382k EPSRC EnergyREV Plus project on smart energy tools for enhancing user engagement in local energy projects. He is also lead academic on the Innovate UK £15.2 million smart local energy system demonstrator, Local Energy Oxfordshire (2019-2023).

Rajat is currently advising UK’s Ministry of Justice (MoJ) on overheating in buildings and has been an adhoc member of DEFRA’s Air Quality Expert Group.