Dubai-based engineer Elie El Choufani has been awarded the 2016 Ken Dale Travel Bursary by the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE), for his plan to research airport carbon emissions.
The Dubai-based engineer won the award for his proposal to research airport design in different environments around the world, to identify opportunities and new approaches to energy efficiency at airports that can lessen both cost and emissions.
Using the prize fund Elie El Choufani, from WS Atkins & Partners Overseas – Dubai, plans to visit San Francisco, Mexico City, the Galapagos Islands and Hong Kong. This will allow him to study airports in a variety of climates, and how they have adapted the various buildings and systems in place to be more efficient in local conditions.
The fund is designed to provide young people with a chance to research environmental sustainability early in their careers in different cultures and contexts, and how it can benefit their employers and their profession as a whole.
Elie El Choufani, winner of the 2016 Ken Dale Travel Bursary, said: “Winning the CIBSE Ken Dale Travel Bursary is an aspiration for most young engineers in the building services industry. I find airports very interesting and from my experience in airport design, energy efficiency is becoming an important matter for airports around the world, for its impact on cost and carbon emissions.
“I am really looking forward to start my trip. It happens that some of the world’s most sustainable airports, which I am planning to visit, are located in areas that will be very new to me, such as the Galapagos islands, one of the world's foremost destinations for wildlife-viewing, which I think will be very interesting.”
The Ken Dale Travel Bursary is an annual award that offers young building services engineers the opportunity to experience technical, economic, environmental, social and political conditions in another country and to examine how these factors impact the practice of building services engineering.
The 2015 winner Luke Ramsey was awarded the prize for his proposal to study data centres around the world, and how they are managing their carbon emissions in some of the world’s hottest countries using cooling and ventilation.