22 Jul 2014
Project features in national campaign to highlight value of university research
The interdisciplinary LEEDR (Low Effort Energy Demand Reduction) project, led by the Building Energy Research Group from the School of Civil and Building Engineering, featured in a UK-wide campaign to highlight the value and importance of university research to our everyday lives.
Researchers from the project joined teams from 44 other UK universities who were represented at Universities Week 2014 at the Natural History Museum in London where the public event showcased some of the best of UK university research.
The exhibition in June included research stations, pop-up performances, debates and live research demonstrations, covering a range of research themes.
Contributing to the ‘late’ event on Wednesday June 11, the project research team invited the public to join them as part of a Researchers Cafe, an informal round table event where visitors were encouraged to have a drink and select a topic raised by the team’s research for debate.
The ‘menu’ on offer presented burning questions and conversation starters in relation to the digital intervention concepts that the Design School, as part of the LEEDR research team, had developed.
The concepts highlighted the team’s research into energy demand reduction within the context of families’ everyday lives.
Questions included: ‘Energy consumption and the future – who cares what happens and how can anyone deal with such uncertainty?’; ‘Can we bend time to create better and more sustainable lives for ourselves?’; and ‘Time is often a poorly planned resource but could we buy time for the things we enjoy by changing our lifestyles?’.
Responding on twitter, one impressed member of the public stated “massive fan of the @leedrproject collaborative work to better our behaviour re. energy use by using gamification/design/engineering etc.”
LEEDR is a four-year research project based at Loughborough University, partnered with E.ON, O2 and AlertMe, which seeks to understand domestic energy consumption within the context of families’ everyday lives and routines.
It is an interdisciplinary collaboration led by the Building Energy Research Group from the School of Civil and Building Engineering, and includes the Department of Computer Science, the Design School, the School of Electronic, Electrical and Systems Engineering, and the Department of Social Sciences.