CDT in Sustainable Chemistry hosted a visit by representatives of Policy Connect and my colleague Paul Henry and myself had the opportunity to organise and facilitate the event.
Laura Owen (Head of sustainability at Policy Connect) and Owain Mortimer (Manager, Carbon Connect & All-Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group) met with the Centre Management, were given the information about the new CNL building and visited several labs to see some chemistry in action. Cohort 1 students Mariana Gameiro, Megan Thomsett and Tatiana Dias enjoyed discussing their research with non-chemists. 

Dr Anna Bertram gave us a tour of the brand new teaching labs in the building and explained how it has been designed to be more sustainable than traditional labs; from the more efficient fume hoods, water use reduction as well as use of natural light. 

After lunch Laura, Owain, Paul and I headed to the Creative Energy Homes  also based on the University Park campus.  The homes were created and designed by the University of Nottingham Architecture and Built Environment students aiming to experiment with various sustainable technologies. 

Having been built using the innovative technologies, each house is rated by appropriate sustainability codes and one of them is even equipped with an electric car charging point powered by the solar panels from the roof.  We must say a big thank you to Dainius Alonderis, the Architecture, Energy and Environment PhD student who led the tour and was incredibly knowledgeable happy to answer the many questions we had.

We returned to the School of Chemistry where Laura and Owain gave a presentation about their work at Policy Connect and the reports they produce (including the ‘Future Heath’ published in October 2015)
Overall, it was a very informative day for both parties, and we hope it was as enjoyable for Laura and Owain as it was us. We learnt how organisations of this kind can influence policy, how their research is conducted and some aspects of what the careers in this area entail and routes to entry.

Hopefully this will be just the start of the student led events from the CDT in sustainable chemistry.

Laura Finney, Cohort 1 student