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Centre for Sustainable Development

Est 2000 - home of the MPhil in Engineering for Sustainable Development

Studying at Cambridge

 

2011 Dr Tommy Ka Kit Ngai

Tommy Ngai is a graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technolgy (MIT) and joined the Centre in 2006 to investigate the drivers and barriers for the implementation of household water treatment systems and safe storage in developing countries.

He is a member of Clare Hall college

Email: tkkn2@cam.ac.uk

Tommy Ka Kit Ngai was born in Hong Kong and migrated to Canada with his family at the age of 13. He studied in Canada, and obtained a Bachelor of Applied Science degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Toronto.

Then, he studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and received a Master of Engineering degree in environmental engineering. His research in appropriate arsenic mitigation technologies in South Asia contributed to the development of the Kanchan Arsenic Filter.

Upon graduation, Tommy worked at MIT as a lecturer and at the Center for Affordable Water and Sanitation Technology as a research associate. He spent about 3 years in Nepal, working closely together with local agencies and grassroot organizations, to further research and to later widely implement the Kanchan Arsenic Filter throughout the country.

Realizing a need to upgrade his knowledge and to gain a broader perspective in water supply implementation, Tommy joined a PhD program at the University of Cambridge, Center for Sustainable Development, where he is currently investigating factors affecting the uptake and diffusion process of household water treatment practises in developing countries.

csd2011

The Centre for Sustainable Development in the Cambridge University Engineering Department was established in 2000, following support provided by the Royal Academy of Engineering, to introduce concepts of sustainability over all our undergraduate engineering courses.

The Centre has grown to encompass the delivery of a one-year full-time taught MPhil in Engineering for Sustainable Development, which was introduced in 2002, and a research community covering sustainable development issues in the fields of water, waste, sustainable communities, assessment methodologies and fragile nation states.

For engineers to address sustainable development, more options need to be considered and evaluated, and more choice criteria developed, than are often adopted using the traditional approach. Several of these criteria will not be conveniently measurable. Values, as well as mathematics, need to be applied in formulating the trade-offs and compromises involved in engineering decision-making, and these need to be transparent and accountable to a wide constituency of interested parties.

Our work adopts a multi-disciplinary approach and focuses on the context and complexity in which engineering products and services are delivered.