Mr Somak Sengupta

About

In my current role I am doing research on the most effective ways through which staff and students can help Universities to meet their sustainability targets. I wish to publish my findings from the research so that everyone could benefit from it. I am also working on the development of a training course for all students and staff members in Kingston University which focuses on education for sustainability.

Prior to working in Kingston University, I did MSc. in Environmental Monitoring, Modelling and Reconstruction from the University of Manchester. While environmental monitoring and modelling helped me to understand and analyse real-world environmental problems like flooding and water pollution, environmental reconstruction gave me an insight into how climatic events and their long-term geological impacts help us to discern the current and future dynamics of climate change. We had the option of selecting a few elective courses during our Masters, and I took up environmental restoration, environmental planning, spatial ecology and understanding GIS. These courses helped me to gain practical skills, especially in the field of biodiversity conservation, which is my favourite field of interest. My dissertation was related to the conservation of ground-dwelling animals like hedgehogs by analysing their habitat connectivity during predicted future flooding events in the urban UK. The gDistance package in R and the Jacobs flood modeller software were mainly used to perform this analysis. I believe the findings from the study could be used to make the urban habitat connectivity for ground-dwelling animals more resilient in the face of the looming threat of climate change.

I did my Bachelors in the field of Mechanical Engineering and as my final project worked on 2 research papers on the challenges in the field of sustainable manufacturing. Both of these papers were published in reputed journals. After my graduation, I worked for 4 years as a design engineer in Jacobs Engineering in the pharmaceutical and semi-conductor sector. I was an active member of various employee networks related to sustainability and inclusion during my tenure at Jacobs.

I wish to continue working in the environmental sector and make substantial contributions to it.