Ms Meng-Chin Tsai

Introduction

I started my PhD study in the School of Engineering and Innovation in October 2022, working with an interdisciplinary supervisory team (Dr Leslie Mabon, Prof Alice Moncaster and Dr Alice Fraser-Mcdonald).

Before coming to the UK, I completed my bachelor's and master's degrees in Taiwan, specialised in applying GIS and remote sensing techniques in identifying social and environmental dynamics in urban areas. I'm interested in topics of urban sustainability and land change dynamics under policy-based perspectives.

My PhD project 'Urban Greening Strategies: Practices and Measures for Neighbourhood Heat Resilience' is looking at two specific themes:

(1) What priorities should we identify when including green infrastructure design for heat risks?

and 

(2) What are the essential governance elements in supporting green infrastructure management and protecting vulnerable citizens from extreme heat in the urban context?

In this research, I start with a comprehensive heat vulnerability assessment to include social, economic and environmental data sets, and further review different urban greening approaches and policies among UK and Taiwan cities, in order to bridge local authorities and various levels of key actors together in heat mitigation strategies. One of the case studies (Taipei) has been recently published in the Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning.

Projects

I'm involved in a project, 'Urban Greening for Heat-resilient Neighbourhood', with my supervisors Leslie and Alice. We worked in partnership with Sniffer and Climate Ready Clyde in Scotland and the Taipei GR Lab at National Taiwan University in Taiwan on case studies in Glasgow and Taipei. Throughout this research project, we aim to understand how communities have experienced hot weather so far, and how trees and green spaces might help to reduce this heat risk in future.

Here is the link to the project: Urban greening for heat-resilient neighbourhoods

Volunteering 

I am keen to bring positive changes to the PGR communities, by spreading students' needs and voices. I am a co-organiser of the E&I monthly seminar to recruit speakers and schedule PGR upgrade talks with the PGR tutors. This year (2025), I also volunteered to co-organise the PGR Summer Conference to gather both full-time and part-time students together in igniting their  research creativity and ingenuity through presentations and discussions.

Honour

Taiwan Presidential Hackathon International Track Finalists

[Digital EMpowerment for Efficient TERrain management (DEMETER): This project was developed with some folks in the E&I and mainly contributed by me and postdoctoral researcher Dr Huw Whitworth from Cranfield University. We developed a comprehensive agricultural dashboard utilising IoT data, machine learning, and language models to enhance decision‑making in sustainable agriculture, providing insights into crop suitability, yield prediction, and carbon footprint awareness.]

Bake Your Research 2023 Runner-up

[A multi-layered matcha cake was baked to demonstrate the multifunctionality of green infrastructure and the multiple stakeholders involved in the design and planning process.]