In February 2024 Jennifer Schooling OBE joined Anglia Ruskin University as Professor of Digital Innovation and Smart Places. Prior to this position Jennifer was appointed the Director of the Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction in April 2013. CSIC focuses on how better data and information from a wide range of sensing systems can be used to improve our understanding of our infrastructure, leading to better design, construction and management practices. CSIC has strong collaborations with industry, developing and demonstrating innovations on real construction and infrastructure projects, and developing standards and guidance to enable implementation. Jennifer is founding Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Smart Infrastructure and Construction Proceedings journal (ICE) and a member of PAS185 smart cities security standard steering group and the UKCRIC standing committee. She has also recently served as a member of ICE’s State of the Nation 2017 ‘Digital Transformation’ Steering Group, the Tideway Innovation Forum and Tideway Academic Advisory Group. Since joining CSIC, Jennifer has secured £7.6M in grant funding from EPSRC and Innovate UK for the Centre, including an additional five years’ core funding awarded to enable the Centre to expand its valuable work.
Prior to joining the Centre Jennifer worked for Arup, the global engineering consultancy, for six years. There she led the firm’s Research Business, delivering research strategy development to aid clients in targeting their investments to improve their productivity and competitiveness. During her work managing complex interdisciplinary research projects for clients she developed a strong understanding of the demands placed on our infrastructure and the challenges of extending the design life of existing assets – of which more is being demanded all the time. Jennifer was also Arup’s Research Relationships Manager for the UK, working with staff and academic partners to develop strong collaborative relationships and managing the firm’s research investments.
Before joining Arup, Jennifer spent seven years working for Edwards Vacuum (then BOC Edwards) as a manager for New Product Introductions, leading a cross-disciplinary team to design and bring into production high speed turbo-molecular pumps for the semiconductor and scientific industries across the world.
Jennifer has a PhD in Materials Science from the University of Cambridge.
