Darryl Newport

Professor Darryl Newport is the Director of the Sustainability Research Institute (SRI) and leader of a number of key research projects.

Under the Directorship of Professor Darryl Newport, the Institute has built long-term partnerships in research and consultancy with many external agencies including the Environment Agency, Greater London Authority, Institute for Sustainability, London Thames Gateway Development Corporation, and the local boroughs Barking and Dagenham, Tower Hamlets, and Newham. With Darryl Newport leading the Institute, they have developed industrial programs of research with Thames Water, Aggregate Industries, Augean PLC Ltd, Aylesford Newsprint, and Barking Riverside Ltd, which are being successfully delivered through the SRI.

They have built a research reputation over the last 20 years for high-quality applied research and I have developed extensive commercial and academic networks both nationally and internationally. Likewise, they have delivered a number of international and national funded projects including European Regional Development Funded (ERDF) projects EUREKA and FLASH which enabled access to over 200 SMEs in and around London. This, in turn, has helped to build additional funding partnerships for projects and commercial CPD-based training programs including Innovate UK, and Knowledge Transfer Partnerships. Darryl has developed two TSB/InnovateUK projects with SMEs, Academic and Industry partners providing a combined income of over £240,000. Part of this funding has supported one of our successfully completed PhD students.

To date, the research has produced six publications, of which, four are published in quality refereed Journals (Project Title: Bio-Based Natural Fibre Insulation). The SRI currently has a bespoke research and demonstrator facility at London Sustainable Industry Park (LSIP) funded through the European C2C BIZZ Project providing innovative solutions to extract value from residual resource material through SRI/Industry developed technology. 
The process promotes Industrial Symbiosis through the collaboration of commercial tenants within the LSIP.

Darryl was led on a major European Framework 7 project with 26 partners from 12 different European countries. TURAS is a five-year Project that developed visions, feasible strategies, spatial scenarios, and guidance tools to help cities address the urgent challenges of climate change adaptation and mitigation, natural resources shortage, and unsustainable urban growth. It is designed to assist in the development of policy to enable adaptive governance, collaborative decision-making, and behavioural change in order to facilitate local authorities and communities in the transition process. The Project is designed to research, demonstrate and disseminate transition strategies and scenarios to enable European cities and their rural interfaces to build vitally-needed resilience.

TURAS’s goal is to demonstrate to city communities, businesses, planners, policy-makers, and managers mechanisms for the transition that may be created and implemented as we strive to move to more sustainable urban living.
 

Darryl’s research focuses on the sustainable use of materials, resource efficiency, and the circular economy. These areas of research are particularly important for the development of our future cities and provide considerable opportunity for innovative material and process development. 
 

In a recent interview on citiesabc platform, Darryl Newport spoke about the projects he has been involved with in Africa and Asia:

“We are now involved in the development of infrastructure in different parts of the world. We work on things as basic and important as building roads and other community-based projects using reused materials and local resources. Currently, we are working in countries like Zambia and Sierra Leona among others.

In the past, we have worked in China too. In this regard, China is a very concerned country because they have a real problem with wastage and pollution. They have megacities there and that means mega waste. Our projects in China involved finding solutions in sewer systems from a sustainable approach.”