New centre to address sustainable development challenges in real estate

The Centre brings together PGIM Real Estate's industry experts with academic expertise from across UCL, including UCL Computer Science and the Bartlett, UCL's Faculty of the Built Environment. It will provide a physical space where thought leadership, innovation and education can thrive across emerging digital technologies, architectural materials, construction, and design. It will cover real estate, renewables and digital infrastructure, collectively known as 'real assets'. Sustainable technologies that reduce the costs and environmental impacts of building processes and materials are needed to design, build and manage real estate suitable for a net-zero future. To meet this need, a new strategic alliance has been created between UCL and PGIM Real Estate's recently launched innovation lab, RealAssetX. The alliance aims to leverage world-class research and build an innovation ecosystem that combines environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance metrics with AI and property technologies to create new, sustainable solutions. To nurture new talent in these disciplines, the alliance will support a number of PhD scholarships, including several venture PhDs, encouraging research that can be commercialised through spin-out companies.