Professor Rajat Gupta has been appointed as the next Director of the Oxford Institute for Sustainable Development (OISD). He will be carrying on the work of the previous Director of OISD, Professor Tim Dixon, who has moved on to a new academic position at the University of Reading.

The Oxford Institute for Sustainable Development is one of the major research groupings within the Faculty of Technology, Design and Environment at Oxford Brookes University. Established in July 2004 by Professors John Glasson and Mike Jenks, the Institute has grown to be one of the largest of its kind in the UK, engaging with many of the important and challenging questions around sustainability in the built environment. The interdisciplinary Institute is highly regarded internationally, with core skills in planning, real estate and construction, architecture and engineering.

Projects undertaken by the Institute over the past eight years have ranged from fundamental policy and governance related matters, to applied building systems engineering and transportation. The profile of the Institute is such that it now enjoys a broad range of funding from government agencies (such as TSB and European programmes), research councils (such as EPSRC and ESRC) and directly from industry.

Acting singularly or in combination with other world leading organisations the Institute will continue to play a key role in advancing understanding of critical environmental sustainability issues. Strategically, the Institute will develop as a pre-eminent research driven provider of internationally significant work, responding to the challenges associated with global carbon reduction and climate change adaptation.

Operationally, Professor Gupta will remain as leader of the Low Carbon Building Research Group and will be supported in his new role by the leads of the other Research Groups that collectively make up OISD.

Professor Gupta commented: "OISD is a critical part of the national infrastructure for research and knowledge transfer in the area of built environment sustainability. The environmental challenges we face are profound, but the intellectual capital of the Institute is amongst the best there is, and I am absolutely certain that the Institute will make a truly outstanding contribution to the quest to find reliable pathways to sustainable living and governance. I am looking forward to overseeing this exciting next stage of development of the Institute."