March 2012 For immediate release

New Head of School for Leeds Metropolitan

Farzad Khosrowshahi has been appointed as Head of the School of Built Environment and Engineering at Leeds Metropolitan University.

As a professor in construction and IT, Farzad has expertise in financial forecasting, modelling and management, as well as knowledge of fields associated with construction and engineering. Farzad, who has joined the University today (March 12), said: I am delighted to be working at Leeds Metropolitan and I have been so warmly welcomed by colleagues. I am already absorbed by the collaborative culture within the faculty. There is such a wonderful passion here amongst both staff and students in terms of the education opportunities and quality of life in Leeds.

He joins Leeds Metropolitan from the University of Salford where he was Professor of Construction IT, Director of Construct IT and Director and Theme Leader of the Construction IT Research Centre. Farzad is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Building, and serves on a number of national and international research and policy committees. He has previously served as the chair of Association of Researchers in Construction Management, chair of Information Visualisation Society and Director of Construct IT.

In addition Farzad is a visiting professor at the University of Lyon, France as well as at other institutions, and is frequently invited as a guest and keynote

speaker to institutions in both the UK and overseas. He has a broad track record in collaborative and multi-disciplinary research at both a national and international level. Leeds Metropolitans Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Environment and Technology, Professor Mohammad Dastbaz, said his new colleague is well published within the Built Environment field and has had 12 successful research grant applications since 2008 We welcome Professor Khosrowshahi to Leeds Metropolitan as our new Head of Built Environment & Engineering and we look forward to working with him, he said.

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For further details please contact Julia Williams in the Communications team at Leeds Met on 0113 8125978 or email j.t.williams@leedsmet.ac.uk

Notes for editors: Leeds Metropolitan University has over 25,608 students and around 3, 000 staff. The Vice Chancellor of Leeds Metropolitan University is Professor Susan Price and the Chair of the Board is Lord Woolmer of Leeds. Leeds Metropolitans four faculties are: Arts, Environment and Technology, Business & Law, Health and Social Sciences, and Carnegie. Leeds Metropolitans heritage can be traced back to the founding of the Mechanics Institute in Leeds in 1824. International students rated the University top in the UK for language support, accommodation quality and learning spaces in the 2010 Autumn Wave of the International Student Barometer and sixth in the

world for the quality of its lectures. We have over 1,500 international students from 122 countries around the globe. The Universitys award-winning learning environments include

Broadcasting Place, which was voted the best tall building in the world in 2010 by the Chicago-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) and also winner of the 2010 Leeds Architecture Awards New Building category.