Alison Cooke

Alison Cooke (BA Cantab, MA Cantab, PhD, CEng FIMechE) Energy Efficiency in the Built Environment Programme Manager.

She is a member of Murray Edwards College.

Email : ajc18@eng.cam.ac.uk

Alison is currently leading a multidisciplinary team of researchers at Cambridge University which is undertaking research of relevance to energy efficiency in the built environment.

Alison was the Chair of the UK Future Climate Steering Group from April 2009 until September 2010. (Future Climate is an international project which engages over 1 million engineers worldwide to develop national energy and climate plans). The UK steering group was comprised of engineers and scientists from different disciplines, and included UK government scientific advisers. Under her watch the first IMechE UK 2050 Energy Plan was written and agreement was reached to host the second Future Climate conference in 2011 in London. This work took her to the United Nations COP16 at the end 2010.

Alison is a two-fold graduate of Cambridge, having studied both her BA and PhD in Engineering at New Hall. Her PhD thesis was on ‘The Aerodynamics and Mechanics of Shuttlecocks’.

Alison’s engineering experience, which spans over 25 years, has been both varied and extreme: from living “in” the North Sea working as an offshore engineer with BP Exploration; to developing competitive manufacturing strategies with senior industrialists as RTZ Industrial Fellow based from Cambridge University Engineering Department. She has managed over 120 collaborative projects with industry. Alison is a Fellow of The Institution of Mechanical Engineers, and became a Council Member in May 2009.

As well as an independent consultant in engineering and management, Alison’s previous professional roles have included being an industrial mentor of graduate engineers for the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, lecturing in engineering design, manufacture and management, and technical writing for a large number of research publications. Alison also held responsibility for instigating and leading Cambridge University Engineering Department’s first industrial tour to Taiwan and Hong Kong.