Recruitment & Admissions

The CEADs team brings together scholars from research institutions in China, the United Kingdom, and other countries. The team has long been committed to studying carbon emission characteristics and emission reduction pathways in China and other emerging economies, providing solid theoretical foundations and technical support for low-carbon and sustainable development in emerging economies. The CEADs team, through The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction at University College London, is recruiting PhD students for September 2024 entry. Support may be available through the UCL Research Excellence Scholarship, the BSSC departmental scholarship, research project funding, and CSC scholarships. Research directions include, but are not limited to, low-carbon technology assessment, input-output table compilation and application, integrated assessment model development and application, and climate investment and finance.

About the University

University College London, abbreviated as UCL, was founded in London in 1826. It is a world-leading public research university and one of the United Kingdom's long-established institutions with an outstanding reputation, ranking 8th in the 2023 QS World University Rankings. UCL is the founding college of the University of London federation and, together with the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, Imperial College London, and the London School of Economics and Political Science, is known as one of the G5 super-elite universities. UCL is also a member of the Golden Triangle, the Russell Group, the China-UK University Engineering Education and Research Alliance, and SES-5. UCL is known for its diverse and cutting-edge disciplines. The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment is widely recognized as one of the world's most influential architecture and built environment schools. Climate change and sustainable development are among The Bartlett's most important strategic priorities.

Recruitment Notice

Requirements

Relevant academic background, such as economics, environmental science, geography, or other related disciplines;

A master's degree, obtained before August 2024;

IELTS 7.0, with no less than 6.5 in listening, speaking, reading, and writing, or TOEFL 96, with no less than 24 in reading and writing and no less than 22 in listening and speaking;

Proficiency in at least one programming language, such as Python, Matlab, or R;

At least three months of internship experience with the CEADs team before formal admission;

Application deadline: November 15, 2023.

Funding Opportunities

Full or Partial Scholarships

UCL Research Excellence Scholarship;

BSSC departmental scholarship;

Research project funding;

CSC national public study-abroad program.

Application Materials

Interested applicants are encouraged to send the following materials to Professor Jing Meng as early as possible at jing.j.meng@ucl.ac.uk.

Email subject: “PhD application 2024 - Name”;

CV in both Chinese and English;

Research interests and research proposal, two pages;

Proof of language test scores.

Supervisor Team

Xi Liang

Professor

Professor Xi Liang is Chair Professor of Sustainable Infrastructure Transition at University College London and Secretary-General of the Guangdong Southern Carbon Capture and Storage Center. He also serves as a standing committee member of the Climate Investment and Finance Association and the Carbon Market Committee of the Chinese Society for Environmental Sciences, and as deputy director of its Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage Committee. Professor Liang previously served as Associate Professor of Energy Finance and Director of the Centre for Business and Climate Change at the University of Edinburgh Business School, and as Lecturer in Energy Policy in the Department of Geography at the University of Exeter. He has led multiple Asian Development Bank and World Bank projects, including the ADB urban climate investment and finance roadmap project, the ADB climate finance accelerator project, including research on digital innovation in carbon markets, the ADB CCS Excellence Center in Guangdong as international lead, the ADB steel carbon capture and utilization feasibility study, the World Bank Networked Carbon Markets project in China, and several strategic program fund projects of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He has published more than 50 academic papers and more than 40 reports related to climate investment and finance, regional emissions accounting, and CCUS, and holds five patents and two software copyrights.

Zhifu Mi

Professor

Professor Zhifu Mi is Professor, PhD supervisor, and Vice Dean at The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, University College London, and a senior visiting scholar at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research focuses on climate change economics and policy, with publications in leading international journals including The Lancet, Science family journals, Nature family journals, and Cell family journals. He has been selected as a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher and has received honors including the World Sustainability Award, the award for China's 100 most influential international academic papers, the Energy Economics Best Paper Award, the Environmental Research Letters Best Early Career Paper Award, and the Applied Energy Highly Cited Original Paper Award. He serves as editor-in-chief of Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, an SSCI journal with an impact factor of 6.1, and as executive editor, associate editor, or editorial board member for several international journals. In student supervision, he received the 2022 UCL Award for Outstanding Research Supervision.

Jing Meng

Professor

Professor Jing Meng is a tenured professor and PhD supervisor at The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, University College London, and a fellow at the Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance at the University of Cambridge. Professor Meng has long been committed to interdisciplinary research, including climate change mitigation policy, integrated assessment models driven by low-carbon technological innovation, and the socioeconomic impacts of coordinated emission reductions. In the past five years, Dr. Meng has published more than 50 papers as first author and corresponding author, including co-corresponding author, in leading journals such as PNAS, Nature Energy, Nature Climate Change, Nature Geoscience, Nature Communications, Nature Sustainability, and One Earth. Dr. Meng was named a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher in the cross-field category for three consecutive years from 2020 to 2022. She received the 2023 Global Environmental Change Early Career Award from the American Geophysical Union, was selected among the 2022 Asia-Pacific Innovators Under 35, received the 2020 Future Sustainability Leader Award, was recognized in 2018 for a Nature Communications top 50 Earth and planetary sciences paper, and received the 2017 Environmental Research Letters Best Early Career Paper Award.

Yiming Wang

Associate Professor

Associate Professor Yiming Wang is Associate Professor at The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, University College London, and Programme Director of the MSc Infrastructure Investment and Finance. His research uses spatial econometric models and geographic information technologies to study public policy and public management related to the urban built environment, with particular attention to public finance support for sustainable urban infrastructure construction and development, such as low-carbon transport and pollution reduction, and to performance evaluation of relevant government policy interventions. His academic papers have been published in mainstream SCI- or SSCI-indexed journals in urban studies and public policy, including Land Use Policy and Transport Policy. His recent research projects have received support from international academic institutions including the Worldwide Universities Network and the British Academy, and he has also participated as an overseas expert in domestic research projects supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

Zaihan Gao

Assistant Professor

Assistant Professor Zaihan Gao is Assistant Professor in Sustainable Development Construction and Investment at The Bartlett, University College London, and holds a PhD in Finance from Durham University Business School. His research areas include corporate finance, green finance, climate investment and finance, sustainable development, and transport economics. He has published multiple papers in related fields and has led or participated in several research projects, including studies on carbon neutrality for Chinese central enterprise financial institutions and on efficient motors supporting carbon neutrality goals in China.

Heran Zheng

Assistant Professor

Assistant Professor Heran Zheng is a tenured assistant professor in low-carbon infrastructure transition at The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, University College London. He received his PhD in climate change economics from the University of East Anglia and was a postdoctoral researcher in industrial ecology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. His research covers industrial ecology, climate change economics, national economic accounting, and sustainable investment, with a focus on small-scale country-level input-output table compilation, regional industrial chain environmental impact analysis, and interdisciplinary research on sustainable production and consumption. In recent years, he has published nearly 70 research outputs, including papers in leading journals such as Nature Climate Change, Nature Sustainability, and One Earth.