People involved in Architects of Change Phase 1

Our People

Jenny Jackson-Smyth

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Jenny Jackson-Smyth

Jenny Jackson-Smyth is the Research Assistant and Project Lead on the Architects of Change project. She joined Ulster University in 2019 and has a background in Architecture after studying at University of Greenwich, London.

She has travelled and lived around the world, teaching English in Hong Kong where she was born. She is an artist and illustrator in her spare time and is interested in sustainability in the built environment and often uses this to influence her detailed pen pieces.

She had a solo art exhibition in 2018 at the Crescent Arts Centre where she displayed twenty original pieces and was recently selected as 1 of 100 finalists in Architizer’s One Drawing Challenge – both in 2020 and 2021, showcased on their online publications.

Professor Raffaella Folli

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Professor Raffaella Folli

Professor Raffaella Folli is the Principal Investigator on the Architects of Change project. Professor Folli is a Professor of Linguistics and was previously Provost of Belfast and Jordanstown campuses from 2016-2021. She studied Philosophy at the University of Milan. In 1998 she completed an MPhil in Linguistics and in 2001 a DPhil in Linguistics at the University of Oxford.

She joined Ulster University in 2005 having previously held research positions at the University of Arizona and then the University of Cambridge where she was a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellow from 2002-2005. Her main research area is theoretical syntax. In 2011 she received a Distinguished Research Fellowship award in recognition of her research achievements.

She is part of the linguistics team that in 2012 established the Ulster Centre on Multilingualism (UCoM), an information service for people raising or working with children growing up with more than one language.

She is involved in Language Made Fun, a programme supporting the language needs of multilingual and migrant children in NI, in collaboration with Barnardo’s and funded by Big Lottery Fund.

Professor Jayanta Mondol

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Professor Jayanta Mondol

Dr Jayanta Deb Mondol is Co-Principal Investigator on the Architects of project, alongside Professor Aoife Houlihan Wiberg. Dr Mondol is Reader and Research Director in the Belfast School of Architecture and the Built Environment at Ulster University. He holds BSc (Hons) and MSc in Physics and an MTech in Energy Science and Technology. He was awarded a PhD in Solar technologies in 2004.

He is a member of the Energy Institute, a member of the Institute of Physics, a member of the International Solar Energy Society and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He previously served as Course Director for the BEng (Hons) Architectural Engineering and BEng (Hons) Energy and Building Services Engineering programmes at Ulster University.

He has more than 20 years of research experience in solar energy technologies, energy efficiency in buildings, multifunctional building façade, off-grid solar, and modelling of energy systems.

He has coordinated several multidisciplinary research projects in collaboration with the industries, academic institutions, and national and local stakeholders. His research has attracted over £2M research funded by EPSRC, Invest Northern Ireland, Royal Society, UK India Education and Research Initiative, Innovate UK, InterTradeIreland and EU.

He was the Project Manager and PI for the ‘SolaFin2Go’ project and is currently PI for the ‘SolaNetwork’ project funded by EPSRC and Innovate UK. He was the Work Group leader for the EU COST Action project (TU1205) and a working group member for the Bio-Energy action plan in Northern Ireland.

He has published over 100 research papers in peer-reviewed journals, conference proceedings and edited book chapters. In addition, he has contributed over 20 research reports for industrial led research projects.

He has received outstanding paper awards at international conferences (WREC, EUROSUN), nominated for ‘Britain’s Younger Engineer’ in 2006, awarded for outstanding Doctoral thesis and awarded by International Solar Energy Society for the ‘Best Full-Length Paper published in Solar Energy Journal’ in the year 2005-06.

He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Renewable Energy, Sustainable Buildings Journal and Journal of Solar Energy Research Updates. He has served as Guest Editor in a number of Journal Special issues, as a technical and scientific committee member for many international conferences (REC-2019, IRENEC 2017, BIRES 2017, Eurosun-2017, NVVE, 2017, SDEWES etc). He is a regular reviewer of more than 25 international journals.

Professor Aoife Houlihan Wiberg

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Professor Aoife Houlihan Wiberg

Professor Aoife Houlihan Wiberg is the Co-Principal Investigator on the Architects of Change project. She is Studio Lead for the 'ZEN Architecture III - Zero Belfast' architecture studio which provided core content to this project and her student ambassadors for this project: Rory Magee, Cathal Mc Kenna and Caolán McCaughley, as well as her 2 PhD researchers, Ryan Johnston and Ben James.

She was appointed Professor in Architecture and founding Director of The Architectural Research Group at The Belfast School of Architecture and the Built Environment at Ulster University in September 2019. She received her PhD and M.Phil. Degrees from the Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge and trained as an architect at The Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University. She is an International Researcher and a chartered member of The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) with over 15 years expertise in Net Zero Emission Design and Embodied Carbon.

She has worked in practice in the UK, Ireland, Hong Kong, Malaysia and The Bahamas and has returned to the UK after working for a decade at The Research Centre for Zero Emission Neighbourhoods in Smart Cities at NTNU, Trondheim, Norway. She is an Associate of Cambridge Architectural Research Ltd. and a member of Darwin College, University of Cambridge.

Professor Houlihan Wiberg has initiated and worked on numerous significant international and Norwegian Research Council funded research projects that have engaged academia, public and private bodies. Professor Houlihan Wiberg is an acknowledged expert in the field of Embodied Carbon and Net Zero Emission Design and climate neutral buildings.

She has over 80 publications and is a regular invited speaker both nationally and internationally in Korea, Japan, Singapore, USA and Europe. In addition to membership of a number of international scientific committees and editorial boards, she is a regular invited reviewer of several leading international peer reviewed journals and founding editorial board member Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability (ERIS) and is a UK representative of the in The International Energy Agency (IEA Annex 72 - Assessing Life Cycle Related Environmental Impacts Caused by Buildings) and previously was the Norwegian national representative in IEA Annex 57 – Evaluation of Embodied Energy and CO2eq for Building Construction.

Ben James

PhD Student

Architects of Change

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Ben James

PhD supervisors: Professor Aoife Houlihan Wiberg and Dr Jayanta Mondol

Ben James is an Architect with over 10 years’ experience in the industry, having worked in practices in London and Northern Ireland. Ben has a particular interest in creating sustainable buildings and urban environments, responding to the climate emergency we now find ourselves in.

Over the years he has explored how we can create better neighbourhoods through design, as well as steps we can take to improve our existing buildings. Ben is currently undertaking PhD research at Ulster University looking into how existing housing stock in Northern Ireland can be taken to ‘Net Zero Emission Building’ levels.

This has allowed him to support the Architects of Change project through his architectural experience as well as his understanding of Zero Emission buildings.

Caolán McCaughley

Student

Architects of Change

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Caolán McCaughley

Caolán McCaughley is in his final year of his Master’s in Architecture at Ulster University and is a member of Super Studio – 'ZEN Architecture III - Zero Belfast' led by Professor Aoife Houlihan Wiberg.

His work throughout university has been aimed at making the more sustainable option the most attractive option, by attempting to create places and infrastructure that allow people to act more sustainably, more easily.

This interest is reflected in his thesis project – A sustainable transport hub aimed at improving rail and public transport connectivity in Northern Ireland, with the aim to reduce emissions from transport.

Cathal McKenna

Student

Architects of Change

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Cathal McKenna

Cathal Mc Kenna is in his final year of his Master’s in Architecture at Ulster University and is a member of Super Studio – ZEN Architecture III - Zero Belfast' led by Professor Aoife Houlihan Wiberg based at the Belfast campus. Over two consecutive years, he has developed an interest for sustainable architectural transformation and reuse, averting further emission output from demolition for new build, primarily within inner-city areas.

The combination of zero-emission design strategies and enhanced retrofitting in his projects demonstrate the idealistic environmental, social and economic benefits from conserving a city’s usable declining urban fabric.

Dr Adrian Pugsley

Visiting Professor

Architects of Change

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Dr Adrian Pugsley

Dr Adrian Pugsley is an engineer who thrives on solving problems by creating innovative solutions for cutting edge projects, progressing ideas from the research arena towards practical realisation and commercialisation.

His professional career spans >20 years, initially as a consulting acoustic engineer in the construction industry, and more recently as an academic Research Fellow working on building integrated renewable energy systems, with focus on photovoltaics, solar thermal, and energy storage.

Adrian has an undergraduate degree in Electroacoustics (B.Eng) from the University of Salford and post-graduate degrees in Renewable Energy and Energy Management (MSc) and Building Integrated Solar Collectors (PhD) from Ulster University.

He has extensive experience working in multi-disciplinary design teams on commercial construction projects in the UK and overseas and a growing portfolio of academic collaborations with industrial and international partners focussing on heat and power decarbonisation. Adrian has published work on solar desalination, nanocomposite solar water heaters, liquid-vapour thermal diodes, and off-grid energy systems for sub-Saharan African rural electrification.

His work tends to focus on design, prototyping, fabrication, and experimental testing, underpinned by theoretical analysis. Adrian regularly delivers consultancy projects providing design advice, laboratory testing, and other industrial research services to large corporate clients and smaller local entrepreneurs.

Adrian is highly focussed on practical research but also contributes to lecturing, laboratory class teaching, student project supervision, and public outreach. He is a regular technical reviewer for several journals including Elsevier’s Renewable Energy and Solar Energy journals.

Rory Magee

Student

Architects of Change

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Rory Magee

Rory Magee is in his final year of his Master’s in Architecture at University of Ulster and is a member of Super Studio – 'ZEN Architecture III - Zero Belfast' led by Professor Aoife Houlihan Wiberg. He has an interest in lowering embodied emissions within the built environment, in particular the implementation of mass timber as a structural alternative to traditional steel and concrete frames.

This interest has been the driving force behind his dissertation, in which he compared the embodied emissions between equivalent CLT (cross-laminated timber) and RC (reinforced concrete) structures, to discern the reduction in emissions that can be achieved by a mass timber structure.

Ryan Johnston

PhD Student

Architects of Change

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Ryan Johnston

PhD supervisors: Professor Aoife Houlihan Wiberg, Dr Jayanta Mondol & Dr Ibrahim Mottowa

A Geospatial specialist with over 10 years of experience, Ryan started his career with Ordnance Survey in Northern Ireland supporting government departments leverage location data to support decision making around investment, infrastructure, taxation, and blue light services.

Later as a Senior Geospatial Technologist with Connected Places Catapult, a UK Government innovation research centre to bridge the gap between Academia, SMEs and UK Plc., he was a part of a multidisciplinary team involved with researching the benefits of XR (Extended Reality) technology for commercial application from 2015 as well as new mobility services from national mobile phone data analytics.

Ryan later led and advocated research methods rapidly developing geospatially accurate game environments to create digital twins capable of supporting the virtual testing of high-risk projects such as Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (Human Drive & ServCity). Ryan is currently investigating the potential for XR to communicate to diverse stakeholders the impact of decisions on sustainability targets such as Net Zero within the Urban Environment through a full time PhD with Ulster University.

This has given him the opportunity to support the Architects of Change project and students with insight into XR technologies, spatial data and to learn from the architectural expertise of the students themselves.

Read the Sustainable Manual

The Architects of Change manual was published in March 2022 and features work from the project's Research Assistant, Master's students, PhD Researchers and associated colleagues from the School of Architectural and the Built Environment.

Read the manual