Associate Professor of Sustainability in the Built Environment

Dr Ronita Bardhan is Associate Professor of Sustainability in the Built Environment at the Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge. Her research focusses on data-driven design for built environments that respond by reducing health and energy burdens in the warming climate. She currently works on humid heat health and energy burdens due to the built environment design.

Bardhan combines architectural engineering, AI and machine learning with social sciences to develop built environment design solutions. She has developed novel methods to inform building and city design by combining physics-based building design optimisation with qualitative socio-economic, socio-cultural norms, occupant behaviour and community norms data. She has conducted heat-health & energy research in diverse socio-economic settings in the United Kingdom, India, Ethiopia, South Africa, Indonesia etc. Bardhan specialises in data-driven design for developing context-specific solutions in the affordable housing sector.

Bardhan is the Director of MPhil in Architecture and Urban Studies (MAUS) and leads the Sustainable Design Group at the university. Her impactful work on developing design solutions for reducing the burdens of tuberculosis, heat health and poor indoor air quality in slum rehabilitation housing has received immense traction from policymakers. Bardhan currently advises government agencies on energy efficiency and heat health in affordable housing and has written over 130 academic articles on the health and environmental design of the affordable residential built environment