Dr Alan Forster is Associate Professor within the Royal Academic of Engineering Centre of Excellence in Sustainable Building Design, Heriot-Watt University. His research focuses on themes that investigate traditional and low-carbon building materials; building resilience to climate change; maintenance and fabric repair of traditional and historic buildings; pathology, survey and evaluation of buildings; heritage building information modelling; building conservation philosophy; and construction and engineering pedagogy. He has over 90 published works and has attained cumulative research grant funding as PI & CI across 23 projects totalling approximately GBP 1.14M (FEC) from an array of RCUK funding councils, including EPSRC, AHRC, TSB, RSE, RAE and British Council. He was awarded a Visiting Research Fellowship at the University of Bath in 2011, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh visiting Research Fellowship in 2014 at the Academy of Sciences for the Czech Republic. Professionally, he is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Builders, a member of the Institute of Historic Building Conservation and is an associate member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. He was awarded the 2010 Graduates Teaching Prize for lecturer of the year and the 2010 ‘Spirit of Heriot-Watt University’ award for Pursuing Excellence.