GCARE celebrates 5th anniversary
Surrey’s Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE) team came together on 6 June to celebrate five years of research which is contributing to its mission of ‘clean air for all’.
The GCARE team celebrated on campus.
Gathering informally on campus, the team of around a dozen academics and researchers took the opportunity to reflect on the Centre’s history and the challenges it has overcome over the past five years – as well as looking to the future.
GCARE was set up in June 2017 by founding Director Professor Prashant Kumar to develop understanding on the impact of air pollutants on quality of life, and to mitigate this impact by creating engineering-driven solutions and influencing regulatory strategies.
Led by Professor Kumar, the Centre – which sits within the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering – has secured over £10m in research funding since its launch (including leading the UKRI-funded RECLAIM Network Plus). It has completed more than 40 projects and produced over 300 journal articles and a similar number of conference publications as well as numerous reports, policy briefs, guidance documents and public resources in the domain of air quality, climate change and public health. The Centre is a hub for global collaboration and has hosted visiting researchers across the world.
Just a few of GCARE’s achievements have been:
- Improving air quality in and around schools via projects such as COTRACE, COAIR and Lambeth Schools, and by publishing a guidance booklet which has been translated into 20 different languages and is used around the world
- Developing and leading multidisciplinary international projects such as CArE-Cities and CArE-Homes which are helping to reduce the impact of air pollution on human health linked to transport emissions in cities such as Cairo and Sao Paulo
- Collaborating with partners across Europe to manage the rising impact of severe weather and climate-related hazards using nature-based solutions through projects such as OPERANDUM and RECLAIM Network Plus
- Establishing the Guildford Living Lab which empowers the local community to take action to improve air quality based on scientific evidence
- Educating primary and secondary school children about climate change through the initiatives such as Heat-Cool.
- Identifying the importance of indoor ventilation in reducing the risk of Covid infection and evaluating the efficiency of different types of commercial and handmade facemasks
Professor Kumar says: "GCARE works towards the vision of clean air for all, understanding the impact of air pollution in our life. That's why we are working globally on developing fundamental research to fill the missing knowledge gaps, conducting application-oriented research to address real pollution issues, and translating this into awareness-raising and public engagement activities such as Guilford Living Lab.
“We are happy to celebrate five years of GCARE and excited about the work ahead as we continue to follow our vision."
GCARE hosts Vice Chancellor Fellow Professor Lidia Morawska and its members have won University awards including FEPS PGR Researcher of the Year (Arvind Tiwari), Vice-Chancellors Award for Surrey’s Researcher of the Year (Professor Prashant Kumar),and recently an IIA Officer (Yendle Barwise). To date, over a dozen PhD researchers have graduated, and nearly two dozen research fellows worked, at GCARE.
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