University of Southampton
Loughborough University
MRC Epidemiology Unit, Cambridge
University of the West of England, Bristol
Bristol University
University of Oxford
National Obesity Observatory, Oxford
University of Strathclyde, Glasgow
University of East Anglia, Norwich
University of Southampton
The School of Civil Engineering and the Environment at the University of Southampton was awarded the highest grade (5*) in the 2001 RAE. The School is organised into four research groups covering Energy and Coasts, Environment, Infrastructure and Transportation. TRG has particular expertise in transport data collection using new technologies and in safety research. TRG are providing project management and leading the measurement and evaluation of travel impacts, as well as leading a detailed case study of the Itchen Walkway that is due to open in 2010.
John Preston is the Principle Investigator of the iConnect project. He is Director and Professor at the Transportation Research Group (TRG), School of Civil Engineering and the Environment, University of Southampton. He has over 20 years experience in transport teaching and research. He has taught transport options on Economics, Engineering, Geography, Management and Planning courses. His research in transport covers demand and cost modelling, regulatory studies, and land-use and environment interactions. His initial work concentrated on rail but subsequent work has covered all the major modes of transport. He has held over 100 research grants and contracts, worth over £3 million, and has published over 160 articles, book chapters, conference and working papers. He is editor of Transport Policy and a member of the World Conference on Transport Research Society Scientific Committee. He is an elected Fellow of the Transport Research Foundation and an adviser on transport issues to the House of Commons and Hampshire County Council.
Yena Song is Research Fellow at the TRG, involved in measurement and evaluation of travel impacts, as well as the detailed case study of the 'Itchen Walkway' Connect2 case study in Southampton.
Karen Ghali is the iConnect Consortium Manager. Her pimary role is to manage and coordinate our research efforts. Crucially she is heavily involved in the administration and organisation of the primary data collection tools, most notably the less than trivial task of organising the household surveys at up to five case study sites across the UK.
Chris Mair is a PhD student at the TRG, working on innovative tools for collecting and analysing travel behaviour data such as GPS loggers.
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Loughborough University
The British Heart Foundation National Centre for Physical Activity and Health (BHFNC) based in the School of Sport and Exercise Science at Loughborough University undertakes underpinning and applied research as well as the translation of evidence into practical advice and recommendations, aimed at furthering our understanding of effective approaches to increasing physical activity for the primary and secondary prevention of diseases and the promotion of health and wellbeing.
Fiona Bull is Professor in Physical Activity and Health and Research Director for the BHFNC. Her previous positions include Research Scientist at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia and Physical Activity Advisor at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva. Her areas of expertise include measurement of physical activity, the health benefits of physical activity, programme and intervention evaluation and monitoring, and national policy on physical activity. She is principal investigator on the evaluation of the national Well@Work project (BHF, Department of Health and Sport England), co-investigator on a five-year prospective study on the influence of the built and open-space environment on physical activity (West Australian Health Promotion Foundation), co-investigator on the assessment of physical activity in children for the EU-funded ALPHA project, co-investigator on systematic reviews of intervention studies on physical activity and the environment for the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, and lead investigator on the development of the Global Physical Activity Questionnaire (GPAQ) in collaboration with WHO.
Emma Adams is a Research Associate in the British Heart Foundation Centre for Physical Activity and Health. She is the Principal Investigator for the evaluation of Fitter for Walking, Step Up and Walking Works (January 2009 to December 2011) which is funded by Living Streets. In iConnect, she is aheavily involved in developing the evaluation framework and measurement tools.
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MRC Epidemiology Unit, Cambridge
The remit of the MRC Epidemiology Unit is to investigate the causes and prevention of diabetes and obesity; as well as conducting studies of interventions to prevent these conditions and their determinants, the unit has a research programme dedicated to the measurement and epidemiology of physical activity.
David Ogilvie is a public health physician and Clinical Investigator Scientist at the MRC Epidemiology Unit, part of the Institute of Public Health at the University of Cambridge, and honorary consultant in public health medicine. His work has focused on the relationships between transport, physical activity and health and the effects of interventions in this field, encompassing both evidence synthesis and the methodological challenges of designing new intervention studies, for example by establishing the M74 study, a longitudinal study of the health effects of a new urban motorway in Glasgow. He is a member of SPARColl and the NICE programme development group on physical activity and the environment. He is also a co-investigator in the Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR), one of five new centres of excellence in public health research funded by the UK Clinical Research Collaboration. In iConnect David is a co-investigator and work package leader (WP3- Case Studies).
Shannon Ferney is a Career Development Fellow at the MRC Epidemiology Unit. In May 2009, Shannon left sunny Australia to join the iConnect team. She completed her PhD at The University of Queensland for which she developed and evaluated an interactive neighborhood-specific physical activity website. Broadly, Shannon's research interests relate to physical activity and health across the lifespan. More specifically, her work now focuses on examining the determinants of active travel in adults and adolescents, and on developing and evaluating population-based approaches to physical activity promotion (including the promotion of active travel).
Lee Smith is a University of Cambridge PhD student at the MRC Epidemiology Unit. His PhD has a focus on the epidemiology of active travel in children and adolescents.
He studied a BSc in Applied Sport Science at Loughborough University and continued on there to complete an MSc in Physical Activity and Health, where he conducted research investigating how micro level features of the physical environment influence physical activity behaviour.
Within iConnect, Lee is one of the lead researchers on the evaluation of the A10 footbridge in Cheshunt. His research focuses on the influences on active commuting behaviour in adolescents, in particular examining the influences of independent mobility and the physical environment.
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University of the West of England
The Centre for Public Health Research has a track record in delivering applied research relevant to public health with particular strengths in the evaluation of public health interventions, school-based interventions, user involvement, young people, vulnerable groups and health promotion.
Jane Powell is Reader in Health Economics in the Centre for Public Health Research at the University of the West of England (UWE) in Bristol. She is programme leader for the MSc Public Health programme at UWE and one of the editors of the textbook Public Health for the 21st century: new perspectives in policy participation and practice (Open University Press). Her previous research includes development and testing of quality-of-life measurement tools and epidemiological research on large survey datasets in international public health collaborative projects. She was the economic evaluator of health promotion interventions in the national evaluation of Kerbcraft, a child pedestrian project in England and Scotland funded by the Department of Transport.
Nikki Coghill is Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Public Health Research at the University of the West of England (UWE) in Bristol. She has a background as a Health Promotion Specialist in Physical Activity and Health, as well as almost 20 years teaching experience within Higher Education in Physical Activity and Health and the determinants of physical activity.
Her previous research includes a randomised controlled trial of walking in hypercholesterolemic men, the analysis of large data sets related to epidemiology and qualitative research on Healthy Universities in the South West Region. She has also conducted a small qualitative study for iCONNECT relating to the format of the household survey. Her current related work includes the impact of the 2010 Olympics on physical activity levels, the analyse of a large data set relating to determinants for walking and cycling as well as evaluating the Connect2 Cardiff case study site.
Anja Dalton is a PhD student at the School of Health and Social Care / Centre for Transport & Society, focussing on gender issues in UK cycling and on how social influence may encourage increased levels of cycling.
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Bristol University
The Exercise, Nutrition and Health Sciences (ENHS) research stream at Bristol University is part of the new Centre for Development and Evaluation of Complex Interventions for Public Health Improvement (DECIPHer) which is one of the United Kingdom Clinical Research Collaborations (UKCRC), and is known internationally for its work on the measurement of physical activity and its association with health across the lifespan.
Ashley Cooper is Reader in Exercise, Nutrition and Health Sciences (ENHS) at Bristol University. He is principal investigator on the PEACH project (Personal and Environmental Associations with Children's Health) funded by the MRC (under the National Prevention Research Initiative) and the World Cancer Research Fund in which accelerometry, global positioning system (GPS) data and geographical information system (GIS) data are being integrated to investigate children's use of the environment for physical activity. His recent work has focused on using accelerometry to investigate the association of active travel to school with physical activity in the UK and in Denmark as part of the European Youth Heart Study (EYHS). He is a member of the scientific committee of the EYHS and the NICE programme development group on the promotion of physical activity in children.
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University of Oxford
The ECI is a world-class centre for research on climate change and plays a lead role in the Government's three major research initiatives in this area, the UK Climate Impacts Programme, the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and the UK Energy Research Centre. The TSU has an established international research reputation in the fields of transport policy analysis, sustainability, transport economics, the development of new methodologies and behavioural studies.
Christian Brand is Senior Researcher on Transport and Energy at the University of Oxford, dividing his time between the Environmental Change Institute (ECI) and the Transport Studies Unit (TSU). He has over twelve years' research experience in both academic and consultancy environments focusing on integrated analysis of the interface between transport, energy and the environment. He led the ESRC-funded project Counting your carbon: the development and deployment of integrated travel emissions profiles, covering annual travel activity across all modes of transport and associated carbon emissions at the individual, household and local levels. He is co-leader of the Transport and Aviation Topic within the Demand Reduction Theme of the UK Energy Research Centre (for RCUK), focusing on strategic modelling of technological and non-technological transport policies, including pricing, smarter choices and other policies intended to promote a modal shift. On iConnect, Christian is co-investigator at Oxford and work package leader on WP6. He is also lead supervisor for the two iConnect DPhil students, Andre and Lucy.
Tim Jones is Research Fellow at the Transport Studies Unit, University of Oxford. He shares his time between the Unit and the Department of Planning / Oxford Institute for Sustainable Development (OISD) at Oxford Brookes University where he is also a lecturer / researcher in transport planning. Tim's main role iin iConnect s to lead the Connect2 Kenilworth case study on measuring and evaluating changes in travel and carbon emissions as a result of the scheme. Tim is also co-supervising the two Oxford based DPhil students, Andre and Lucy.
Andre Neves is a DPhil student at Oxford, focussing on developing and applying methods for collecting, processing and mapping data using GIS. Using a realistic evaluation approach, he is investigating a number of case study specific context-mechanism-outcome configurations. This enables him to evaluate connectivity, accessibility, overall change in travel behaviour and carbon emissions at the household and local population levels.
Lucy Mahoney is a DPhil student at Oxford, investigating the net effects and changes in travel behaviour and carbon emissions in response to physical interventions for walking and cycling. Qualitative data will be collected from respondents through household interviews and contextual fieldwork. This will be supported by the collection of quantitative data to examine and calculate measures of carbon emissions for individual households and householders. Key research questions will include investigating the changes in travel behaviour and carbon emissions by socio-economic classification of the household and by car ownership.
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National Obesity Observatory, Oxford
The National Obesity Observatory was established to provide a single point of contact for wide-ranging authoritative information on data and evidence related to obesity, overweight, underweight and their determinants. This specialist observatory is a member of the Association of Public Health Observatories and is sited alongside the South East Public Health Observatory. The National Obesity Observatory works closely with a wide range of organisations and provides support to policy makers and practitioners involved in obesity and related issues.
Harry Rutter is a public health physician, Director of the National Obesity Observatory, and an associate of the BHF Health Promotion Research Group in the Department of Public Health at the University of Oxford where he is Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer in Public Health. He was a member of the project management group for the Foresight obesities project, and was responsible for the development of the current national childhood obesity surveillance system; until the end of 2007 he was the national public health observatory lead for physical activity, transport, and obesity. He was the lead author of the WHO health economic appraisal tool for cycling, is leading a work package on assessment of transport-related determinants of physical activity in the ALPHA project, and is the main contributor to three work packages on the role of the built environment in the EU-funded PREVOB project. He was responsible for the work establishing baseline physical activity measures in the Cycling Development Towns and led the health impact assessment of the Sustainable Travel Towns.
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University of Strathclyde
The University of Strathclyde hosts SPARColl and also supports a physical activity network (SPAN) which aims to connect researchers in all disciplines with research relating to physical activity; this network contains relevant psychological, measurement, geographical and transport expertise.
Nanette Mutrie is Director of the Scottish Physical Activity Research Collaboration (SPARColl) and Professor of Exercise and Sport Psychology in the Department of Sport, Culture and the Arts at the University of Strathclyde. She is principal investigator on SPARColl, an inderdisciplinary collaboration funded by the Scottish Government to increase the evidence base relating to physical activity, which has expertise spanning the lifecourse from childhood to older adulthood. She has previously been principal investigator on related projects for NHS Health Scotland, including the promotion of active travel to work and encouraging bus commuters to walk a stop, and on a Cancer Research UK project on the use of exercise in breast cancer rehabilitation. She is co-investigator on many related projects and has over 100 related peer-reviewed articles and books. She chaired the NICE programme development group on physical activity and the environment (whose guidance is forthcoming on 23 January 2008). She is a member of the panel on sport-related studies for the 2008 RAE and was part of the 5* award to the Univesity of Glasgow in sport-related studies in the 2001 RAE. She is associate editor of the journals Physical Activity for Health, International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology and Mental Health and Physical Activity. The University of Strathclyde hosts SPARColl and also supports a physical activity network (SPAN) which aims to connect researchers in all disciplines with research relating to physical activity; this network contains relevant psychological, measurement, geographical and transport expertise.
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University of East Anglia at Norwich
The Urban Modelling Group focus on the construction and visualisation of urban environments.
Andy Day is leader of the Computer Graphics group and the Urban Modelling Group (UMG) in the School of Computing Sciences (CMP) at UEA Norwich. He has published over 90 papers in journals and international conferences. He has been either principal or co-investigator on several EU projects, for example ETHOS to identify, demonstrate, and evaluate Generic Technologies for Virtual Environments and the CHARISMATIC project. He was PI on the EPSRC funded Rapid World Modelling (GR/N38442/01) project which involved modelling the world using compression techniques that minimise the data storage requirements. He is currently PI for UEA on the EU funded EPOCH Network of Excellence, where UEA leads the work on populating urban models with virtual humans, and for the Spatial Metro project for which UEA CMP is the partner responsible for urban modelling. He is also PI on the EPSRC grant (EP/E035639/1), 'Real Time Rendering of Crowds consisting of high quality and distinct people' using different behaviour models and space syntax theories. These theories have been adapted to the behaviour of cyclists.
David Drinkwater is Senior Research Associate in the Urban Modelling Group (UMG). His role in iConnect involves close collaboration with Strathclyde on developing virtual reality models, photo montages and individual buildings for the Glasgow case study (provisional).
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