UNSW Researchers Recognised

2025 was another year of UNSW researchers receiving high acclaim internationally. Anita Lawrence Chair in High Performance Architecture, Prof. Matt Santamouris was named as the number one researcher in the world in the field of Architecture over his lifetime by ScholarGPS in their 2025 analytics. While seven UNSW Built Environment and City Futures Research Centre academics were included in the world’s top two percent of cited researchers as computed by Stanford University– Prof. Hazel Easthope, Scientia Prof. Michael Ostwald, Scientia Prof Chris Pettit, Scientia Prof. Matt Santamouris, A/Prof. Samad Sepasgozar, Prof. Riza Yosia Sunindijo and Prof. Sisi Zlatanova.

Negin Nazarian wins Global Environmental Change Award

In September, Scientia A/Prof. Negin Nazarian was awarded the 2025 Global Environmental Change Early Career Award by the American Geophysical Union – the world’s largest earth and space science association. This international award recognises outstanding research, educational and societal contributions to global environmental change within ten years of completing a PhD. 

2025 also saw A/Prof. Nazarian named as a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Climate Change and Cities – one of only four authors from Australian institutions.

Fellowships and lifetime achievement awards

2025 saw several of our academics recognised for their sustained scholarship and leadership over many decades.

Emeritus Prof. Hal Pawson was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) for his outstanding contribution to housing research and policy. Prof. Pawson has dedicated his career to policy-focused housing research, informing contemporary debates about governance and strategy, private rental housing, social and affordable housing and urban renewal.

Scientia Prof. Deo Prasad was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Australian Sustainability Awards, in recognition of his transformational contribution to sustainable buildings and environmental leadership.

Prof. Robert Freestone received the Australasian Cities Research Network (ACRN) medal at the State of Australian Cities conference in December. The award is given in recognition of sustained and outstanding service to the ACRN community and for his urban research scholarship and policy. 

Finally, Emeritus Prof. James Weirick received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Urban Design Association NSW, for his prominent role in nurturing urban design culture in Australia.

UNSW and MIT collaboration wins Good Design Award

Benchmark for NSW is a design research project that integrates smart street furniture and civic data to enhance perceptions of safety in public spaces. A collaboration between UNSW, MIT and Transport for NSW the project was named a Gold Winner for design research at the 2025 Good Design Awards.

Distinguished Creative Teaching Award for Bernadette Hardy and team

A UNSW Built Environment team led by A/Prof Bernadette Hardy with Eva Lloyd, A/Prof Sing D’Arcy, Prof. Gillian Barlow, A/Prof Sara Padgett Kjaersgaard, Anissa Jones and Dharug Dharawal Ngurra won the 2025 Deans and Directors of Creative Arts (DDCA) Distinguished Creative Teaching Award. This national award recognised the significant contribution of Indigenous staff and Indigenous knowledges - ways of being, seeing and doing - across the Landscape Architecture and Interior Architecture Programs in the School.

The judges citation noted “We are particularly impressed by the teams’ demonstration of a deep commitment to experiential learning, with hands-on, site responsive design work as evidenced by students’ work samples. The student learning samples are outstanding – as they foreground students being guided and mentored in cultural protocols and storytelling to develop a deeper sense of human and non-human relationships.”

Best paper and editorial awards

2025 saw many of our researchers win national and international awards for their published work.

Dr. Lisa Ewenson from the How We Survive initiative won the 2025 Andrea Durbach Prize for her outstanding article Lived experiences of youth justice detention in Australia: reframing the institution in a decarcerated state. "Lisa's article is a wonderfully grounded qualitative study that combines an understanding of the current youth justice detention framework, including structural drivers of incarceration such as endemic poverty and colonisation, and a convincing argument for decarceration," said Dr Regina Jeffries of the prize jury.

Albert Agbeko Ahiadu, Dr. Rotimi Abidoye and Prof. Tak Wing Yiu, won the Best Refereed Paper Award at the 31st Pacific Rim Real Estate Society (PRRES) Conference, for their work Opportunity or Threat? Commercial Property Investors’ Perceptions of Economic Policy Uncertainty. 

The paper ‘Influence of Prefabricated Construction on the Mental Health of Workers: Systematic Review’ won the Best Paper Award in the European Journal of Investigation in Health, Psychology and Education (EJIHPE). The paper was co-authored by Rasaki Kolawole Fagbenro, Prof. Riza Yosia Sunindijo, Scientia Dr. Chethana Illankoon, and Dr. Samuel Frimpong.

The team of A/Prof. Nicole Gardner, Tracy Huang, Prof. Hank Haeusler and Daniel Yu, together with collaborators from Kyushu University, Masaaki Iwamoto, Tomo Inoue, and Hanano Tanaka, were awarded Best Paper at the 31^st CAADRIA (Conference on Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia) held in Tokyo, Japan. Their paper, From Digital Turns to Digital Transformation, examines Shoei Yoh’s Glass Station (1993) in Oguni, Japan—an early and influential project that integrated computational design processes within a broader architectural and technological shift in Japan during the early 1990s.

Charlotte Firth and A/Prof. Nicole Gardner won best paper at the Australasian Universities Building Education Association (AUBEA) Conference for their paper titled ‘From Complexity to Capability: Reframing Robotic Fabrication as a Pedagogical Tool in Design Education’. 

Finally, Scientia Prof. Michael Ostwald was awarded a Springer Nature Editorial Contribution Award and a Springer Nature Author Service Award in 2025, for his contribution to international scholarship, editorial service and reviewing.