MPhil in Engineering for Sustainable Development @ University of Cambridge

This course is for young professionals, mid-career professionals who want to pivot their career in sustainability, someone who is early in their career, and a fresh graduate.

This is an 11-month course spread over three terms having 4 core, 4 elective, and 2 management modules, seminars, a dissertation, and field visits. The best part of this course is the flexibility to choose your courses, the availability of the wide range of options to choose from across departments/schools, and of course, the amazing cohort coming from across the world.

Like core and management modules, elective modules are also compulsory but you get to choose from a wide range of subjects and departments depending on your interest, especially Cambridge Judge Business School, one of the leading B schools across the globe.

Let's dive a little deeper into the nature of these modules.

Core modules

i. Driving Change towards Sustainability: Discusses bringing personal and organizational change and change management with the help of recommended frameworks.

Instructor: Dr. David Morgan, Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge, Course Director MPhil in Engineering for Sustainable Development

ii. Sustainability Methods?and Metrics: Focused on various tools and methods to learn the sustainability of a product, process, and entity. Tools such as Causal Loop Diagram to understand system dynamics, Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP)

Instructor: Dr. André Cabrera Serrenho, Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge

iii. Innovations?in?Sustainable Design?and Manufacturing: Introduces sustainability framework in design, manufacturing, and production at all levels and also the concept of circular economy.

Instructor: Dr. David Morgan

Guest Lecturer (s): Prof. Steve Evans, Institute for Manufacturing (IfM), University of Cambridge, Dr. Mukesh Kumar, Institute for Manufacturing (IfM), University of Cambridge

iv. Resilience of?Infrastructure Systems: Deals with the concept of resilience and the role of resilient infrastructure in building a sustainable society.

Instructor: Dr. Kristen MacAskill, Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge

Management Modules

v.?Client Consultancy Project: This is unique to this course and offers an opportunity to work with an actual client on a real project in consultation with industry mentors in a time-bound manner on an agreed deliverable.

I worked as a Client Manager Lead with DNV Consulting on the topic of “green hushing” which is fairly a new concept, and we were the early researchers exploring this term. After secondary research and consulting and interviewing DNV leadership, we produced and successfully defined the processes and recommendations on mandatory ESG reporting and the need for third-party audit for international sustainability reporting standards such as GRI, TCFD, CDP, SASB etc.

Instructor: Dr. Kristen MacAskill

Industry Client (One of the clients in the module): DNV

Industry Mentor(s) from DNV: Souvik Ghosh, Shuhaib Maudarbaccus, Santiago Sottil

Stakeholder Engagement with DNV Leadership and Team: Jason Perks, Sven Edgren, Niki B., Tom Barnett, Colin Whitfield

vi.?Stakeholder Engagement: This has several parts to it, a book review, witness questioning by a select committee with an actual industry leader, and multi-stakeholder negotiation dealing with real scenarios.

Instructor: Dr. David Morgan

Industry Partners/Affiliates: Steve Hope from Toyota Motor Europe, Nico Sergent from Riversimple, Ian Ellison from Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), JLR (former)

Elective Courses

The following courses are my selection, one can take up a completely different set of electives.

vii.?Climate Change Mitigation: Discusses all possible mitigating pathways to climate change using the existing technologies and methods to achieve the Net Zero target of 2050.

Instructor: Prof. Julian Allwood, Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge,

Guest Lecturer: Dr. André Cabrera Serrenho, Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge

viii. Negotiation Skills: Offered by Cambridge Judge Business School . This course is one of the most engaging classes of all. We had to learn and perform the negotiation in each class using a framework that is being taught in the class while assuming the role of the stakeholder. This involved single to multi-party negotiation representing a client that could be an individual, group of individuals, national and international organization(s), and government and government departments.

Instructor: Prof. Mark de Rond, Cambridge Judge Business School

ix. Policy, Legislation?and Government: Understanding International Organizations, their agreements (eg. COP), and their functioning.

Instructor: Phil Callaghan, The Open University

x. Business, Government & Technology?in?Emerging Markets: One of the most pragmatic and closer to the reality and discussing the challenges and opportunities in the global south. It sheds light on the role of government, industry, and entrepreneurs in emerging economies.

Instructor: Prof. Jaideep Prabhu, Jawaharlal Nehru Professor of Indian Business & Enterprise, Cambridge Judge Business School, Director of the?Centre for India & Global Business (CIGB), Author of Jugaad Innovation.

Audit Courses

You may also audit as many courses as you want. These are neither compulsory nor credited. I have audited 3 courses.

xi. Business?Innovation?in?a?Digital?Age: Learned about the global digital disruptors and the underlying concepts with the help of case studies

Instructor: Dr. Karla (Carla) Sayegh, Cambridge Judge Business School

xii.?Electricity?and Environment: Energy resources, market dynamics, and technical know-how of energy alternatives.

Instructor: Prof. Michael Pollitt, Cambridge Judge Business School

xiii.?International?Business: Understand the global companies, their expansion strategies, the nature of regulations, priorities of government bodies, and the response of the target audience.

Instructor: Dr. Samsurin Welch, PhD, Cambridge Judge Business School

Dissertation

Topic: The?role?of?telemedicine?in reducing?the?carbon footprint, providing sustainable health care, and improving health access in India

You have to write a dissertation with a maximum of 15,000 words. Apart from an increased understanding of the domain knowledge, one could learn various qualitative as well as quantitative research methods while managing a research project. I have used the literature reviews, ethnographic studies, semi-structured interviews, and the Engineering Better Care Framework developed by the Royal Academy of Engineering and the University to research this interdisciplinary topic and produced a list of recommendations on improving rural health access and making climate-resilient health infrastructure by enhancing local training, emphasizing on regional language, and improvement in maternal healthcare, primary healthcare, and mental health issues while saving in energy due to less travel and using energy-efficient equipment.

Supervisor: Dr. Timoleon (Timos) Kipouros, Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge

Advisor: Dr. James Smith, Cambridge Public Health

Stakeholder Interviews: Sanjay Sood, Ph.D. , Karan Thakur , Vibha Bhirud , Dr. Shilpa Bhatte, MD , VIVEK MITTAL , Dr. Rohit Borkar

Field Visits

i. Stonehenge: to understand the impact of a National Highways project near the heritage site on the local environment and biodiversity

ii. Wales: to the Riversimple factory, Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) at Machynlleth, Rheidol Hydro Plant, Canolfan Hyddgen a Passivhaus Trust and BREEAM certified council building, Rheidol Wind Farm, and Ironbridge

Seminars

A number of fascinating seminars were delivered by various academic and industry leaders on topics ranging from sanitation and hygiene, highways, future cities, philanthropic projects, data and misinformation, ethics, systems thinking, and several others.

Cohort

Generally, the cohort size varies from 25-35 (not fixed). In 2022-23 there were 26 students from 17 nationalities covering 5 continents, consisting of mid-career and young professionals, as well as fresh graduates.

Overall it is a complete package of sustainability and does justice to the topic of Sustainable Development. However, one thing that the course should improve on is the representation of emerging economies in the content of core courses and in its overall standing.

I would like to thank the course director and all the amazing Instructors from across the departments, mentors, and participants for making this academic journey full of learning, unlearning, and relearning for me.

Please feel free to reach out with your queries, I would be happy to answer.

Stay happy and be the reason for someone’s smile :)

Interested to know more about the course: MPhil ESD

Note: The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own