Meet the winner: Puria Radmard
Puria Radmard is an undergraduate student in Engineering at Trinity College. He has recently won a Vice-Chancellor’s Social Impact Award, acknowledging his valuable contributions to several sustainability projects in Cambridge.
Puria’s nominator highlighted how he has been dedicated to different initiatives.
“Puria has engaged himself with a remarkable diversity of projects in a considered and intelligent way.
He has notably also used programming skill gleaned from his Engineering course to further these projects and develop them further. Finally, he has shown the ability to build and work as part of a team throughout the progress of these various projects.”
Puria described in more detail the projects he has been involved with.
“Starting as Trinity’s Environmental and Domestic Officer in my first year, I have aimed to build the profile of environmental campaigns, such as with the establishment of Trinity Ethical and Green Affairs (TEGA). TEGA Week also ran in February, with guest event panellists including a Green Party councillor, and Baroness Brown of Cambridge. With TEGA now taken on as the undergraduate wing of the Trinity Climate Change Working Group, I am also its only UG representative and co-lead of the Food and Waste Sub-team. This position allows me to work with Fellows in assessing and advising on sustainability in the catering department. As a CUSU Ethical Affairs officer, I also provide undergraduate representation on University-wide boards such as the Carbon Offsetting Working Group and the Hot Food Waste group.
In collaboration with the non-university Cambridge Climate Emergency group, we have built the Cambridge Carbon Map that displays the emissions information from Cambridge organisations on a single online platform. We have already gained data contracts from Cambridge City Council, St. Edmund’s College, King’s College, the Leys School, and are due to begin operation shortly. This project has gained attention as well, with Varsity and local newspapers reporting on it.
With roots in the Map project, I have most recently been leading the foundation of a group called ‘Talking Environment’ (although a rebrand is underway!) which aims to boost student understanding and involvement in climate policy. It has gained support in Cambridge Zero, and is set to connect to other Universities through its networks such as EAUC.
In the Engineering Department, I am development lead of the Sustainability App project, an initiative part of the Impact Through Innovation Cambridge society that will provide a resource to ‘translate’ high-end research into simple lifestyle tips for (initially) Cambridge students. This project has amassed a team of roughly 30 already across many departments, albeit progress has slowed under lockdown.
Also in the department, I am second-year and environmental representative for the SSJC. While most of my time there has been spent surveying and understanding corporate branding in the course, my biggest impact was made in short notice while communicating and managing the student opinion and welfare to the pandemic lockdown and the assessment plans that came from it.
Finally, I have worked with two non-profits while at Cambridge, playing major re-planning roles in both cases. The first is Blue Tap, an award-winning humanitarian start-up social enterprise that provides cheaply manufactured water technology to developing countries, where I redesigned their jerry can lid, a core part of their business model. The second is the Climate Crisis Foundation, where my team and I improved their charity rating system radically.”
Upon receiving the award, Puria expressed his gratitude to colleagues and emphasised how he hopes to inspire others to commit to social action.
