About Maud
Maud Lanau is an Assistant Professor in the Sustainable Built Environments research group at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden.
In her research, she strives to understand how to reduce direct and indirect environmental impacts caused by the development of the built environment. To this end, the paradigms of socioeconomic metabolism and the circular economy provide valuable frameworks. She is particularly interested in the potential that highly granular – spatially and temporally – material stock models of the built environment offer in terms of sustainability analytics. In addition to modeling material stocks with a variety of data sources, approaches, and tools, she investigates the different applications and implications of stock results through collaboration with various research fields. Currently, her collaborations span urban morphology (material stock-urban morphology nexus), construction management (logistics and urban resource centers), geotechnics (sustainable mass handling), governance (resource cadasters as a decision-support tool), and construction practitioners to ensure research applicability and relevance.
She is also engaged in Industrial Ecology education. She developed a new course for the MSc Industrial Ecology at Chalmers – "Sustainability Analytics and Visualization" – which she teaches to second-year students.
Before her current position, Maud was a postdoc at the University of Sheffield. She holds a BSc in Applied Physics (UT3PS, FR), an MSc in Industrial Ecology (Chalmers, SE), and a PhD in Environmental Engineering (SDU, DK).
Main research/work interest areas
- Socio-economic metabolism
- Built environment
- Material stocks and flows
- Circular economy
- Sustainability visualization
Collaboration interests
- Continue strengthening a collaborative knowledge base on material stocks
- Collaborations around sustainability visualization and data/IE storytelling
My favorite cities
Toulouse (France). This is where I was born and where my family and best friends live. The city is beautiful. It was founded in ancient times, so it is packed with history, some of which you feel as you walk the cobblestone streets, looking at the red brick buildings. The food and the weather are great and there are just so many things to do; I just love it!
Gothenburg (Sweden). My adoptive city. It is the same size as Toulouse, though very different in terms of urban planning (and weather!). One thing I love is how one can simply hop on a municipal ferry to go enjoy the archipelago! There are also ample opportunities to go to concerts and other cultural events. And it is a great city to conduct my research; the high climate targets set by the city (near-zero climate footprint by 2030) means there are many opportunities to collaborate, share knowledge, and co-create with construction stakeholders.