Susan Roaf, award winning teacher, designer, researcher and author, is director of the Low Carbon Cities Initiative, consultant for The Carbon Trust and the Green Consultancy advising on low carbon design for major projects, visiting professor at the Open University and Arizona State University, and an Oxford City Councillor. She has degrees from the University of Manchester, the Architectural Association and Oxford Brookes University. Having spent ten years in Iran and Iraq she completed academic studies on the windcatchers of Yazd, nomadic architecture in Iran, and the ancient water systems, technologies and archaeology of Iraq. She has written books on landscaping in arid lands, the ice-houses of Britain, energy efficient buildings, thermal comfort, ecohouse design, benchmarks for sustainable buildings and adapting buildings and cities for climate change. She lectures to a wide range of specialist and general audiences on related subjects. During her time as lecturer, then Professor of Sustainable Architecture at Oxford Brookes University she developed a national and international reputation for work on thermal comfort, photovoltaics, passive building design, ecohousing and the education of architects. She chaired the 2006 2nd International Solar Cities Congress in Oxford dealing with the fields of energy and emissions mitigation policy, carbon counting, climate change action planning and case studies of city level programmes. She has served on a range of national and international committees, think tanks and working groups with architects, planners and engineers. She is a member of the EPSRC College and has organised numerous national and international conferences and outreach events. She is currently engaged in research, consultancy and Council work on domestic thermal comfort, fuel poverty, urban renewal, health, emergency response planning, low carbon college and campus design, and the adaptation of buildings and cities for climate change, using Oxford as a case study in many projects.