Dr Lucia Corsini
Lecturer in Product Design Engineering

Summary

Dr Lucia Corsini is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow, leading research on Systems and Engineering Design for the Circular Economy. This work enables a low-carbon Circular Economy for Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE) that reduces the mining of rare, expensive and critical minerals. 

Lucia holds a BA, MEng, MA (Cantab) and PhD in Engineering from the University of Cambridge. Since she joined Brunel University London in September 2021, Lucia has been awarded over £2.1m in research funding from UKRI, EPSRC, ESRC and other funding bodies. In addition to her prestigious UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship (£1.8m), she was awarded a ESRC New Investigator Award (£249k). She is also the Waste Reduction and Valorisation Management Lead for the Park Royal Place-Based Impact Acceleration Account (PBIAA): Net-zero Food Supply Systems Management Committee (£2.5m) awarded by EPSRC to Brunel University London. 

Prior to joining Brunel University London, Lucia was a Research Associate and EPSRC DTP Fellow at the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, where she studied how distributed manufacturing could enable more sustainable production and consumption. She was also a Research Assistant at the Systems Change Observatory, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. Before this, she completed her EPSRC-funded PhD in Engineering at the University of Cambridge (2020). She received an award from the University of Cambridge School of Technology for her PhD, awarded to only one PhD student in the Department of Engineering per year. During this time, she was a member of the Cambridge Circular Plastics Centre (CirPlas) where she co-led the development of technology for converting plastic waste into construction materials. 

Lucia's research has been published in leading engineering and management journals such as Sustainable Production and Consumption, Production, Planning and Control and R&D Management, and her research has also contributed to the Government Digital Sustainability Alliance (GDSA) and UK Parliament inquiry on Electronic Waste and Circular Economy. She received an award for a top cited and downloaded publication in R&D Management and has won multiple best conference paper awards, including from 4D and ISIRC Conferences.

Lucia regularly contributes to national and international conferences, workshops and roundtables on sustainability, including as an invited speaker at the All-Party Parliamentary Sustainable Resources Group, UK Government Digital Sustainability Alliance, Hager Forum, Cambridge Forum for Circular Economy Approaches to Eliminate Plastic Waste and Cambridge Climate Change and Sustainability Forum. Additionally, Lucia advises on policy issues for governments and international organisations, and she has written reports and articles for the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation, the World Economic Forum, and the UK Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy. She is currently (February 2024 - ) a Visiting Research Fellow to the UK Government Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) where she develops systems engineering methods for policy makers to tackle circular economy and net zero challenges.

Lucia also has experience advising industry and start-ups, as well as developing and commercialising innovations across a range of research and business contexts, for example as a board trustee at the Internet of Production and as a mentor at the University of Cambridge's Centre for Global Equality Cultivator. Before joining academia Lucia gained industry experience working at Siemens, Atkins, Jaguar Land Rover, Simprints and Accenture. 

Qualifications

BA, MEng, MA (Cantab), PhD Engineering, University of Cambridge