Sustainability

  • The liFETIME CDT is dedicated to promoting sustainability and we endeavour to reduce our carbon footprint to make the CDT a more sustainable environment.

    Below are some examples of how we deliver our sustainability commitment:

    1. Laboratory work has a significant impact on the environment, ranging from plastic waste/lack of recycling to energy consumption. As we have students occupying many labs across all partner universities, we are working hard to raise awareness about sustainability within our student community.
    2. We have set up a sustainability working group, who meet regularly to share information and experiences of changes made at home or within labs to encourage and motivate other students to switch to more sustainable habits.
    3. We have two dedicated sustainability representatives who are both passionate about promoting sustainability and making real changes.
    4. We encourage students and supervisors to work towards achieving a sustainability accreditation for their lab either through My Green Lab or UCL’s Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF). We are working towards all our labs achieving a bronze award.
    5. We are working to align our centre with the United Nations sustainability goals.

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    Sustainability Representatives

    Student representatives Maria-Laura Vieri and Seb Doherty-Boyd are leading our sustainability programme. Below Maria-Laura and Seb tell us about their personal connections to climate change. Read more about our representatives  and what the lifETIME CDT are doing to become more sustainable in our blog interview with the representatives.

    Maria-Laura Vieri

    Maria-Laura is a PhD student developing a 3D model of the osteochondral tissue. Maria-Laura would like to use this model to study osteoarthritis and find new therapies. The reason why  Maria-Laura decided to become the sustainability representative is because she has always been very sensible to the sustainability topic. Maria-Laura says “The climate change threat is real, and I wanted to do something more than just having a sustainable lifestyle”. Maria-Laura feel that this is a great opportunity to raise awareness and motivate others as well.

    Seb Doherty-Boyd

    Seb is a PhD student working to develop an artificial bone marrow niche for HSC maintenance ex vivo. Seb has been interested in reducing his own carbon footprint since he was a child and has recently become more aware of the existential threat global warming poses thanks to increased media coverage of the topic.

    Adam Efrat

    Adam is a PhD student working on Bioprocess development for production of 3D tissues to underpin creation of engineered meat.

    Francesca Kokkinos

    Francesca is a PhD student working on small molecule induced stem cell differentiation. She has been a long-time rep for tackling climate change, having made multiple changes to herday-to-day over the years to lead a more sustainable and environmentally friendly lifestyle. Francesca hopes being a sustainability rep will give me the opportunity to do more, and truly believes that if we all do our part to improve, protect and preserve our ecosystem hopefully the rest will follow.