Research Leadership & Service

Research Programme Development

The lab develops interconnected research streams across urban environments and population health, active living and mobility, workplace health, public space and health equity, and the scientific development of urban design. These areas provide a common foundation for individual projects while allowing new questions and methods to emerge within a coherent programme.

Research development increasingly extends beyond documenting associations between environmental characteristics and health. Current work examines how evidence can be translated into more spatially specific knowledge for design. This includes parametric urban design and the scientific evaluation of large language models and other AI applications.

Postgraduate Research Leadership

Postgraduate research training is a major component of the lab. Master’s and doctoral projects address questions across urban design, built environments, population health, spatial methods and emerging digital approaches.

Research supervision is structured to develop both substantive and methodological expertise. Students are encouraged to formulate clearly defined research questions, select methods appropriate to those questions and critically evaluate what their findings can and cannot support. Information for prospective researchers is available on the Contact page.

Dr Koohsari has supervised more than 20 master’s and doctoral students, including students from different nationalities. His wider academic record also includes co-supervision, thesis examination and participation in doctoral committees.

Teaching and Research Training

Research leadership is complemented by teaching across urban design, health, environmental geography and design studies. Teaching and invited instruction have addressed built environments and public health, geographical aspects of health, environmental geography, active urban design, design cognition and creative processes in design.

These activities support a broader educational objective: developing researchers who can work across disciplinary boundaries while maintaining methodological rigour. This is particularly important in built environment and health research, where questions often require simultaneous understanding of spatial characteristics, human behaviour and population-level evidence.

Scientific and Editorial Service

The research programme is accompanied by sustained service to the international scientific community. Current editorial roles include Landscape and Urban Planning, npj Exercise Medicine and Health, Clinical eHealth and Heart and Mind.

The wider service record includes extensive manuscript peer review, assessment of competitive research funding and external academic evaluation. Additional documentation of these activities is available through ResearchMap and the Director profile.

International Academic Engagement

International engagement is integral to the lab’s development. Research collaborations and academic exchanges connect the programme with scholars and research groups across Asia, Australia and the Americas. The scope of these relationships is presented on the International Collaborations page.

Invited lectures, seminars, symposia and workshops have addressed urban design and population health, public open space, active living, spatial methods and the scientific development of urban design. Selected recent activities are documented on the International Events page and through ResearchMap.

International engagement also contributes directly to research training. Exposure to different disciplinary traditions, geographical settings and methodological approaches provides opportunities to test whether concepts and findings remain meaningful beyond individual studies or locations.

Advancing Science-Based Evidence for Urban Design and Health

The long-term objective is to advance the scientific evidence base for urban design and health. The programme integrates empirical research, methodological development, postgraduate training, competitive funding and international collaboration so that findings can contribute to more rigorous and spatially specific knowledge for urban design and planning.

This approach positions research leadership around the accumulation of reproducible evidence, clearer measurement of environmental characteristics and stronger translation from population-health research to urban design decisions.