City human-computer interaction academic awarded £1.6m fellowship by UKRI • City, University of London

Dr Sara Heitlinger awarded UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship to support her More-than-Human Sustainable and Inclusive Smart Cities (MoSaIC) research.

By Mr Shamim Quadir (Senior Communications Officer), Published Monday, 4^th December 2023

Dr Sara Heitlinger, Senior Lecturer at the School of Science & Technology, City, University of London, was named among others today as a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow.

The Future Leaders Fellowship grants her £1.6 million of funding, over four years, to support her More-than-Human Sustainable and Inclusive Smart Cities (MoSaIC) research.

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) is a non-departmental public body sponsored by UK Government’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT). Its flagship Future Leaders Fellowships allow universities and businesses to develop their most talented innovators and early career researchers, and to attract new people to their organisations, including from overseas.

Academics and participants in a more-than-human smart cities workshop

More-than-Human Sustainable and Inclusive Smart Cities

Half of humanity - 3.5 billion people - lives in cities today and 68% of the world's population is projected to live in urban areas by 2050. This increase in urbanisation is contributing to biodiversity decline worldwide due to changing land use.

At the same time, digital technologies are changing our cities. Innovations such as real-time bus and parking information, as well as networked rubbish bins and street lighting are often referred to as the smart city, and optimistically promised as a social and environmental good.

However, these interventions generally fail to take into account the ways in which human and non-human inhabitants of cities (such as plants, animals, micro-organisms, as well as sensors) are inter-related and interdependent in urban space.

Dr Heitlinger’s Future Leaders Fellowship will allow her to lead a team to investigate the design of more inclusive, sustainable and flourishing smart cities. They will do this by exploring how digital technologies such as networked sensors, AI, and data visualisation approaches can contribute to better planning and design of smart cities for all their inhabitants - human as well as other species.

The research will be undertaken in three living labs, which are real world testbeds for co-creating research and innovation in public-private-people partnerships. These will take place in three types of site: urban community gardens, buildings, and waterways. The researchers will co-design new prototypes in the living labs that demonstrate how digital technologies can enable sustainable, more-than-human smart cities in practice and policy and in ways that work for communities.

The research will use inclusive and creative co-design methods, and involve close collaboration with key community, business, and policy partners to include the perspectives of human and non-human inhabitants. Partners include Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, and built environment consultancy, Arup.

Reflecting upon receiving her Future Leaders Fellowship, Dr Heitlinger said:

The Future Leaders Fellowship is a life-changing opportunity for me to work on a topic that I feel passionately about, with fantastic collaborators. It wouldn’t have been possible without the generous support of many in the Centre for Human-Computer Interaction Design, the School of Science and Technology and beyond. My hope is that it will bring benefits to my career, to my colleagues, as well as to the wider society and the urban environments we inhabit.

UKRI Chief Executive, Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser, said of the fellowships awarded today:

UKRI’s Future Leaders Fellowships provide researchers and innovators with long-term support and training, giving them the freedom to explore adventurous new ideas, and to build dynamic careers that break down the boundaries between sectors and disciplines.

"The fellows announced today illustrate how this scheme empowers talented researchers and innovators to build the diverse and connected research and innovation system we need to shorten the distance between discovery and prosperity across the UK.