Infrastructure and Environment

The Chair of Future Infrastructure is a new post designed to help policymakers address large-scale challenges in transport and utilities. Professor Masterton will oversee a Centre for Future Infrastructure which will draw upon world-leading expertise in fire safety and structural engineering, granular materials, railway engineering, non-destructive testing and large-scale data acquisition and analysis. Professor Masterton will embark on research to aid decision-making on appropriate infrastructure projects. He will also apply his industry experience to direct research into safe and successful project delivery. He also hopes to study infrastructure in Scotland’s urban and rural mixed economy, as a model to help to address problems created by world class cities in other less populated countries.

Background Experience

Until 2015, Professor Masterton was Vice-President of Jacobs Engineering. He is a past president of the Institution of Civil Engineers, past president of the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland, former chairman of the Construction Industry Council, former Vice Chairman of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, and founder and current Chairman of the Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame. Professor Masterton was the UK Government's project representative on the £15bn Crossrail development in London – Europe’s largest construction project to date. Recently, he was appointed a member of the Independent Assurance Panel for the HS2 high-speed rail link. Professor Masterton brings more than 35 years of industry experience and leadership of major infrastructure design, construction and commissioning to his new post.

• BSc, BA, MSc, DIC

• FREng, FRSE, FICE, FIStructE, FIES, MCIWEM

• OBE, HonDEng, HonDTech

Dr Angus Law is a Lecturer in Fire Safety Engineering; he has previous held positions as a Lecturer at the Univeristy of Queensland (Australia), and as an Engineer at Ove Arup and Partners (UK).

Angus' interests are around developing design methods for use in industry, and ensuring that pratitioners have the necessary skills and knowledge to be able to impliment fire engineering designs safely and effectively.

Angus is currently invovled in reserach projects relating to cladding fires, engineered timber buidlings, and societal aspects of regulation.

PhD in Fire Safety Engineering, School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh (2010).

MEng Civil Engineering, 1st Class, University of Edinburgh (2007).

Dr Law is a Chartered Engineer (CEng) with the Institution of Fire Engineers (MIFireE).

Dr Law's current teaching roles include:

• Course organiser and primary lecturer in the first year programme's Civil Engineering 1;
• Course organiser and lecture in the honours class - Structural Design for Fire Safety 5.

Dr Law also assists in the delivery of the second year's Surveying Field Trip.

Previous teaching roles have included: Fire Engineering Design: Solutions for Implicit Safety; Introduction to Project Management; and Construction Engineering Management.

Edinburgh Research Explorer

Dr Emmanuel Epelle is currently a Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, where he is primarily developing innovative hybrid oxidation technologies for decontaminating reusable medical devices and wastewater. His research features the application of mathematical modelling and laboratory experimentation to analyse the susceptibility of recalcitrant contaminants and microbes to new treatment methods. On a renewable energy front, Dr Epelle also explores the application of diverse modelling methods for assessing the viability of waste biomass-to-biofuel conversion processes and the subsequent utilisation routes.

Before his Chancellor’s Fellowship, he undertook a Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Advanced Clothing Solutions and the University of the West of Scotland, where he developed the UK’s first/patented automated process for decontaminating apparel and PPE on an industrial scale. Dr Epelle received his engineering training from the University of Edinburgh (PhD), Imperial College London (MSc), and the Federal University of Technology, Minna (BEng) and has 5 years of teaching experience in Chemical Engineering courses (mainly computational methods and separation processes). His research is driving the healthcare and energy sectors towards achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (3, 6 & 13), igniting positive change on a global scale.

• BEng in Chemical Engineering, 2014
• MSc in Earth Science and Engineering, 2016
• PhD in Chemical Engineering, 2020

• Chartered Engineer (CEng)
• Member of the IET (MIET)
• Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA)
• Associate Member of the IChemE (AMIChemE)

Current PhD opportunities:

• Modelling gas-microdroplet interaction and dispersion for decontamination applications
• Application of hybrid oxidation methods for the decontamination of complex surfaces

I am open to accepting skilled PhD candidates, postdoctoral researchers, and academic/industrial visitors from diverse engineering fields to collaborate on any of the listed research interests above.

The following list of scholarship opportunities are available within the University:

• University of Edinburgh scholarships
• Principal's Career Development PhD Scholarships​
• Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) scholarships
• Edinburgh Global Research Scholarship
• CSC-Edinburgh scholarship

• MSc Fire Safety Engineering, International Master of Science in Fire Safety Engineering, 2015
• Mechanical Engineer, Universidad Simón Bolívar, 2012

• Tutor, Engineering Thermodynamics 2
• Tutor, Heat Transfer 3
• Tutor, Mechanical Engineering 1
• Laboratory Demonstrator, Fire Science Laboratory 5
• Laboratory Demonstrator, Fire Science Laboratory (IMFSE)

• PhD, Structural Engineering, Queen's University (Canada), 2003
• MSc (Eng), Structural Engineering, Queen's University (Canada), 1999
• BEng, Civil Engineering and Applied Mechanics, McGill University, 1997

Engineering Education

I have an ongoing interest in improving student ownership of and engagement in education in engineering, and have been involved in various engineering design, professional skills development, and curriculum reform initiatives.