Our guest on CIB in Conversation in late October 2021 was Chimay Anumba, Dean and Professor, College of Design, Construction and Planning at University of Florida, USA, Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in the UK, and Fellow of three British professional institutions as we found out during the conversation.
We recorded in the week before the start of COP26, the United Nations’ climate change conference held in Glasgow, UK. Appropriately enough, Chimay finished with his Top Opportunity for global leaders to focus on at this conference, namely the theme of built environment resilience and in particular to address the needs of the most vulnerable population groups ravaged by poverty.
A wide-ranging conversation with Don Ward covered his career and research interests. After a degree in building in Nigeria he undertook a PhD in Computational Engineering at the University of Leeds motivated by a twin fascination in research and the new technology of computers, and worked on the forerunners to object-based modelling. This area remains one of his areas of specialism with a current research programme on digital twins. After three years with the consulting engineers Curtins in Leeds he returned to academia, first with Teesside University, then Loughorough, Penn State and now Univeristy of Florida.
His advice to PhD students was not to be intimidated or to give up, but to work hard and persevere. For and early career researchers (ECRs), there is also no substitute for hard work, and try to avoid distractions by focusing on what you need to advance to the next level.
As a Dean it is challenging to maintain an active research programme, but he wants to lead by example for his colleagues and to mentor younger faculty members. As well as digital twins his other area of research is the new research institute FIBER (Florida Institute for Built Environment Research, which has a sizeable ‘startup team’ of seven academic faculty, five post-doctoral researchers and nearly 20 PhD students. The location of this institute at Florida is significant, given that the region is right in the firing line of climate impact from hurricanes and flooding. He sees this as a good field for technology to have an impact, and enjoys collaborating with cross-faculty and inter-disciplinary expertise such as epidemiologists, healthcare professionals and sociologists as the most exciting research is at the confluence of different disciplines.
Of course we asked Chimay about CIB as he has been involved with a number of the leading CIB Commissions including W078 on IT in Construction. He described the value of our global network in terms of connections and learning, and encouraged involvement for these reasons as well as the opportunities for leadership roles in technical discipline areas. We finished by congratulating him on his forthcoming keynote presentation at the World Building Congress 2022 in Melbourne in June 2022, at which he encouraged attendance whether in person or online if travel is not possible, there will be great learning on offer.
If you liked listening to Chimay then you are in luck, because it will not be too long before he is giving his keynote presentation at the World Building Congress 2022 in Melbourne in late June 2022. Make a date to come and meet him – or if you cannot join him then make sure you are part of the online community for what will be a hybrid format.
