Our team

Kevin Lomas is Professor of Building Simulation, but over the last 18 years monitoring and modelling the environment inside UK homes has been an abiding interest. As Principal Investigator, Kevin led multi-disciplinary teams that recruited households, conducted environmental monitoring, undertook physical surveys and questionnaires, and created new primary datasets for over 1200 homes across England. Working with four healthcare trusts, he led the analysis of temperatures measured in over 20 hospital wards and modelling work to devise building retrofit measures that reduced overheating risk. Most recently, he led the analysis of room temperatures collected for the Energy Follow-up Survey  to the English Housing Survey. This work revealed the national extent of overheating and the problems with the current criterion used to define overheating in bedrooms, which was a spur for this project.

Arash Beizaee is a Senior Lecturer in Building Energy with research experience in multi-disciplinary thermal comfort field trials. He published the first survey on extent and severity of overheating in England and identified the dwellings most likely to overheat. Arash is currently exploring innovations in cool bedding and its potential to improve sleep quality. His work won the 2015 research impact prize of the Homes and Communities Agency and underpinned the recommendations to government of the Adaption Sub-Committee of the Climate Change Committee and the planning guidance of Westminster City Council. Recent work has focused on thermal comfort in social housing where vulnerable people are often less able to tolerate, or to adapt to high or low temperatures.

Iuliana Hartescu is a Lecturer in Psychology focusing on the impact of environment and lifestyle on sleep quality. Her work has included evaluating the impact of community-based exercise interventions for chronic insomnia, and research into sleep duration and its impact on metabolic health. Iuliana’s current work is focussed on sleep health and includes laboratory studies, epidemiological surveys, and clinical trials. She is a co-author of the digital sleep improvement app Sleepful.

Kevin Morgan is Emeritus Professor of Psychology. Under his direction the Clinical Sleep Research Unit (est. 2005) has won funding from the research councils to support epidemiological, field and laboratory studies, and  clinical trials focussed on sleep, health, and sleep quality. His research has included qualitative and quantitative (actigraphic and electrophysiological) sleep assessment methods. Outputs include treatment models for insomnia and quality sleep and learning and self-help materials for clinicians and patients. In collaboration with others, he led the sleep science contribution to a methodology for valuing productivity losses associated with noise-related sleep disturbance, and advised national healthcare regulatory institutions on sleep-related issues.

Victoria Haines is Professor of User Centred Design, a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors, and a Registered European Ergonomist. She co-leads the Design for Future Living Lab and focuses on how people interact with their environment and the products and services they use, particularly at home. Victoria has significant experience in collecting data from people in their homes, including large scale field trials, in which she led work involving cohort interaction. She uses creative methods with householders to understand their needs and identify requirements and explores adaptive opportunities and actions to overheating in the homes of older people.

Jo Barnes is a  Reader in Traffic Injury Prevention with a specific interest in the quality of life of people following a traumatic event. Her research has been funded by the UK research councils and the EU. Jo has extensive research experience in cohort studies and engaging with the public and patients to understand the wider impacts of health on quality of life. She focuses on how people’s everyday lives can be affected by experiences and situations using both qualitative and quantitative methods.

Monisha joined Loughborough University as a Research Associate working on the Home, Heat, Health Project in March 2023. Before this, she was completing her PhD at SRM Institute of Science and Technology, India. Her doctoral project was on development and validation of assessment tool for children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) and she have published research articles on sleep quality examination among school-aged children.

Zoë joined Loughborough University as a Research Associate working on the Home, Heat, Health Project in December 2022. Before this, she was completing her PhD at the department of Psychology and Human Development, University College London. Her doctoral project was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and focused on the uptake of digital health for screening and monitoring of sleep among people with chronic pain conditions. Zoë is Stage 1 accredited in Health Psychology with the British Psychological Society and is a trained practitioner in CBT-I. Beyond her work in academia, she works for an NHS trust to evaluate health innovations using mixed-methods approaches.

Vincenzo joined Loughborough University as a Research Associate working on the Home, Heat, Health Project in April 2023. Before this, he worked on a BEIS-funded Domestic Energy Performance Monitoring project to plan data collection for Government's Standard Assessment Procedure. He is completing his PhD at the School of Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering at Loughborough University. His doctoral project focuses on understanding Fuel Poverty's role in optimising regional-scale building retrofit to achieve decarbonisation in the UK.