Ljubomir Jankovic

I am Professor of Advanced Building Design at the School of Creative Arts, University of Hertfordshire, where I conduct multidisciplinary research and run Zero Carbon Lab.

I have worked as an academic, researcher and practitioner on instrumental monitoring, dynamic simulation and environmental design of buildings over a career spanning three decades.

My work includes the creation of a learning simulation model for buildings, a patent for an expandable and contractible building, research into nature's zero carbon designs and research into zero carbon retrofit of buildings.

My book 'Designing Zero Carbon Buildings Using Dynamic Simulation Methods' has been adopted as core text at several UK, US and European universities and has been used as a handbook by major international consultancies, with a second edition published in June 2017.

Part of my research was based on the work done to evaluate the Birmingham Zero Carbon House, a ground-breaking carbon-neutral building based on a 170-year-old redbrick Victorian house. This research showed how best to convert existing buildings into zero carbon homes of the future. It demonstrated how home owners could eliminate energy bills and fuel poverty, and potentially achieve a significant return on investment.

I worked on delivering numerous solutions for industry, on improving thermal comfort in buildings and on resolving simulation performance gap occurring in buildings built from hemp-lime bio-composite materials. My work on designing thermal performance of two commercial buildings built from that material in the United Kingdom: Ellipta Compliance Building for GlaxoSmithKline and Hemcrete Museum Store for British Science Museum, delivered buildings with negative embodied carbon, and with overall zero carbon performance.

I have established an international conference series on Zero Carbon Buildings Today and in the Future, in order to provide a forum for exchange of knowledge. This has helped with establishing collaboration networks and partnerships in the field. In the absence of a global plan about how to make the planet net zero emissions, this conference series address the 'how' question and makes a small but important step towards a global change in the right direction.

I hold an MSc from the University of Belgrade and a PhD from the University of Birmingham, both in Mechanical Engineering. I am a Chartered Engineer, a Member of CIBSE, a Member of ASHRAE, and a Fellow of the Institution of Analysts and Programmers.

I had a total of £10 million of research grant funding, with a recently completed £1.1 million Technology Strategy Board funded programme on Scaling up retrofit of the nation's homes.