PROJECT TEAM

Professor Rajat Gupta (Project lead)

Barch MSc PhD FRSA

Professor Rajat Gupta is Director of the multi-disciplinary Oxford Institute for Sustainable Development (OISD) and Low Carbon Building Research Group at Oxford Brookes University (UK), where he also holds professorial chair in sustainable architecture and climate change. In 2006 he received the inaugural RIBA outstanding research award for DECoRuM carbon mapping model and presently his research on innovative low energy refurbishment of a historic town council building, has been shortlisted for the 2016 RIBA Research Awards. Rajat’s research interests lie in evaluating housing performance from a socio-technical perspective, carbon mapping buildings and neighbourhoods, scaling up energy retrofits and climate change adaptation. As Principal Investigator he has won over £8.5million ($12million) in research grants to investigate these subjects. Until recently Rajat was PI on a 4-year £1.14 million UK Research Council-funded EVALOC project on evaluating the impacts of low carbon communities on energy behaviours. Currently he is lead academic on UK Government and Research Council funded projects on developing a feedback management system for housing providers (HAPI), building performance assurance product (I-LIFE) and establishing the link between indoor environment conditions and staff productivity (WLP+). He is also Co-Investigator on an EU funded Zero Plus project on positive energy settlements.

Rajat is leader of the UNEP funded mainstreaming sustainable social housing in India project (MAS-SHIP). He was instrumental in refining and pilot-testing the World’s first Global Common Carbon Metric (CCM) for UNEP, and his recent report for UN-Habitat/UNEP on Green building interventions for social housing has had nearly 5000 downloads worldwide. Rajat was also a technical expert for UNEP’s Sustainable Social Housing initiative (SUSHI) and led World Bank supported research on decarbonising national building stocks in UK, USA and India. Rajat has also convened four UK-India conferences (2007-2010) on urban sustainability and low carbon buildings, which led to a special issue of the International Journal of Low Carbon Technologies on low carbon buildings in UK and India. From 2004 to 2006 he was co-lead on an EU funded project on Sustainable Habitat Design Adviser (SHADA) with TERI. Rajat has published widely and is on the boards of several key industry organisations and international task groups.

Webpage: http://architecture.brookes.ac.uk/staff/rajatgupta.html

Sanjoli Tuteja

Barch, MSc

Sanjoli Tuteja is a Research Associate in the Low Carbon Building Research group at Oxford Brookes University (Oxford, UK). She holds a Master's degree in Sustainable Building Performance & Design from Oxford Brookes University and a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from India. Sanjoli has worked as an architect for over 8 years with major architectural design firms in India, as part of which she worked on award-winning green building design projects. As researcher in Oxford Brookes University, Sanjoli has been working on the MaS-SHIP project, helping to develop the decision support toolkit for integrating sustainability in social housing projects, and also undertaking statistical analysis of resident’s experiences of living in social housing developments. Sanjoli is also working on the EPSRC/DST funded RESIDE project on residential building energy demand reduction in India.

Zeenat Niazi

Zeenat is vice-president of the Development Alternatives Group and has over 26 years’ experience in the social and environment development sector. She is an architect and a planner by training, with a specialization in rural habitat development issues and additional training in policy analysis and advocacy. She has over two decades of experience in design and strategic action in the area of sustainable rural development. This has included design of affordable eco-housing delivery models, post natural disaster housing reconstruction interventions and habitat policy development at the national level. In the last decade, her work has extended to design and coordination of low carbon development strategies for the central Indian region of Bundelkhand and coordination of climate change adaptation, action and communication, knowledge management and knowledge dissemination for promoting national and global sustainable development strategies. She is also a founder coordinator of the basin-South Asia – a regional knowledge platform for housing and habitat and represents Development Alternatives at the Climate Action Network South Asia of which she was the co-chair of the Board from 2013 to 2015. Her key interests lie in the area of resource efficient and people-nature centric development planning. She is a trained moderator and facilitator.

Pratibha Ruth Caleb

Pratibha is a deputy manager (Urban Research) at Development Alternatives. Her current areas of work are on policies related to resource efficiency, sustainable housing and sustainable cities. Further, she is also involved in research on the Sustainable Development Goals and their implications for India’s transition towards a greener and more equitable economy. In the MaS-SHIP project she will be involved in assessing the housing projects based on social, economic and environmental parameters, as well as liasoning with the Government for greater buy-in for mainstreaming of such housing projects.

Pratibha holds a Masters degree in Urban Policy and Governance with a specialisation in climate change and urban response from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and a Bachelors degree in Geography (Honours) from Loreto College, Kolkata. Her other academic research has been in the area of sustainable urban transport, where she assessed the GHG emission scenario of Mumbai city with respect to use of only public modes of transportation.

Srijani Hazra

Srijani is a deputy manager (Habitat Solutions) at Development Alternatives. Currently she is leading the Habitat team and is involved in developing appropriate and affordable house designs for rural regions at various locations in India. Her primary focus lies in incorporating new construction technologies in housing schemes so that houses become accessible to large number of people. She has been involved in mason training to build capacity on new construction technologies.

In the MaS-SHIP project she will be involved in developing and incorporating sustainable design strategies with special focus on usage of building materials and construction technologies for different ownership models of housing projects. Srijani holds a Masters degree in Sustainable Architecture from Center for Environment Planning and Technology (CEPT), Ahmedabad and a Bachelors degree in Architecture from Sushant School of Art and Architecture (SSAA) Gurgaon. Her other academic research has been in the area of sustainable model for solid waste management with communities in a wholesale vegetable market of Ahmedabad. Her other interest of research is community led ownership model for public spaces in urban fabric.

Astha Saxena

Astha is a research fellow (Habitat Solutions) at Development Alternatives for the MAS-SHIP project. Habitat team is involved in developing appropriate and affordable house designs for rural regions at various locations in India. She holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture from MBS School of Planning and Architecture GGSIP University Delhi.

Having done her research paper on Utopian ideas in architecture and thesis on incorporation of Utopian ideas vis-à-vis spatial qualities in built environment (retreat centre), her primary focus lies in development of the ideal building systems for holistic development of communities which is the founding philosophy for achieving a sustainable ecosystem for a habitat.

In the MaS-SHIP project Astha will be involved in developing and incorporating sustainable design strategies with special focus on the understanding of social factors that decide the ability of the target group to adapt to the new lifestyle.

Sanjay Seth

Sanjay Seth is Senior Director of the Sustainable Habitat Division with The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI). He is also the Chief Executive Officer & Secretary of GRIHA Council which administers the Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment. Prior to joining TERI, he worked with the Bureau of Energy Efficiency, Ministry of Power, Government of India and headed the vertical on Building Energy Efficiency.

He was also the interim Secretary of the Bureau of Energy Efficiency and responsible for the administration and financial management of the organization. In this capacity, he provided oversight to the implementation of policies and programmes of BEE as well as the National Mission on Enhanced Energy Efficiency (NMEEE), and all international bilateral/multilateral cooperation programmes. He also represented BEE on the Board of Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) as Director. He joined BEE in 2007, with the introduction of the “Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC)”, and was given the responsibility of developing an enabling framework for facilitating its implementation in a consistent manner throughout the country.

By training he is a civil engineer and has more than twenty eight years of experience in the power sector of which the last nine years have been on the demand side. Prior to joining the Bureau, he has worked in various capacities in a Central Public Sector Generating company, under the Ministry of Power and was associated with planning, monitoring, co-ordination and construction management of Hydro and Thermal power projects.

He has vast experience in policies works in the domain of energy efficiency and habitat development. As part of Mas-SHIP, he would be the leading team member from TERI for all administrative and technical decision making.

Sonia IP Dhull

Ms Sonia Rani is Fellow and Area Convenor in the Centre for Research on Sustainable Building Science (CRSBS) group under Sustainable Habitat Division (SHD) of The Energy & Resources Institute (TERI), New Delhi, India. She received her M.Tech degree in 'Energy and Environmental Management' from Indian Institute of Technology (IITD) and B.E degree in 'Environmental Engineering' from Shivaji University, Maharashtra. Ms. Sonia Rani has more 9 years of experience in different streams of sustainable development which includes building materials, water & waste water management, solid waste management at both consultancy and policy levels. She is also actively involved in the field of research and development, policy formulation through project implementation, design and development of water/waste water treatment technologies and resource efficiency measures at building/campus level.

Ms Rani is actively involved in the development of GRIHA LD (Green rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment – Large Developments) document especially base chapters on water, waste water and solid waste was developed by her. She is actively involved in more than four dozen of projects in the capacity of technical team member (national and international) . Her contribution is remarkable in successfully completed projects like resource use benchmarking for Indian Railways, incorporation of sustainability aspects in master plan development of Mayo Campus, Ajmer, greening of warehouses of CWC and resource efficiency in French Embassy, Delhi. In terms of outreach activities she had conducted several technical training programs for CBM, NBCC, MP Tourism, UNEP etc. she is also regular faculty of ITEC course on “Energy & Water Efficiency” annually organized by TERI.

As part of Mas-SHIP, she will be the nodal point of contact from TERI for day to day technical and administrative activities. Her major contribution in the MAS-SHIP project would be to evaluate sustainability parameters to develop sustainability Index (SI) and to validate the SI against pilot scale project to further refine and to develop Design Support Tool (DST).

Megha Behal

B.Arch (Gold medalist), M.Arch.

Megha Behal is working as a Research Associate with The Energy and Resources Instutite in the Centre for Research on Sustainable Building Science (CRSBS) group. Her interest lies in energy retrofits and sustainable building materials.

Megha is team member of the UNEP funded mainstreaming sustainable social housing in India project (MAS-SHIP). She is currently involved in evaluating the performance of roller blinds in Indian context, Energy efficiency in building envelopes, making response plan for energy efficient street lighting technologies in Thailand for Climate Technology Centre-Network and has conducted resource efficiency study in various projects where the common objective has been to establish baseline, identify efficient, feasible and implementable conservation measures for the site development, energy efficiency, building materials, water, waste water and solid waste management.

Preetika Verma

Preetika Verma is working as a Research Associate at Centre for Research on Sustainable Building Science (CRSBS) group under Sustainable Habitat Division (SHD) of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI). Preetika is an Architect by training, educated in India and United Kingdom; she holds a Master degree in Sustainable Tall Buildings from The University of Nottingham (UoN), UK. With experience of 3 years, she has worked on issues related to the environment and sustainability; her work with Architecture and Interior Design firms has been recognized by way of awards and accolades.

Preetika is team member of Mainstreaming Sustainable Social Housing in India Project (MaS-SHIP). She is presently working on evaluation of innovative construction technologies tailored to the Indian building sector and climates; assessment of various building material and technologies towards greener construction of housing projects in India; evaluating the performance of roller blinds in Indian context; and green building consultancy.

Hitesh Vaidya

Hitesh Vaidya, an urban development professional, is a Country Manager, UN-Habitat, India. He has been involved in providing technical assistance and capacity building support to several urban local bodies to institute significant urban reforms.