Yasemin Didem Aktaş
Yasemin Didem Aktaş is an Associate Professor at University College London (UCL), where she leads transformative work at the intersection of structural engineering, heritage, urban physics, and public health. Her teaching and scholarship prepare future engineers to confront the intertwined challenges of climate change, disaster risk, and the transition to circular, low‑carbon structural practice - themes central to her shortlisted submission for the IStructE Excellence in Structural Engineering Education Award.
Yasemin is the creator and academic lead of UCL’s CEGE0125: Adaptive Reuse of Existing Structures, a pioneering postgraduate module she conceived and developed to address a widely recognised skills gap: the ability to read, understand, and work intelligently with existing buildings. One of very few UK modules to treat adaptive reuse explicitly as a structural engineering discipline, CEGE0125 reframes existing buildings as material, spatial, and cultural resources - not obstacles to be overcome, but assets to be understood, valued, and reimagined. Its intellectual foundations draw on her interdisciplinary background in structural engineering, heritage science, and conservation engineering, and on her distinctive diagnostics‑first pedagogy, which emphasises careful structural reading and deep contextual understanding before proposing any intervention.
Her teaching is uniquely strengthened by extensive field evidence. As Chair of the Earthquake Engineering Field Investigation Team (EEFIT), Yasemin has led and contributed to multiple international post‑earthquake reconnaissance missions, including the 2023 Türkiye earthquakes. This work continuously informs her teaching, providing students with real‑world insights into structural performance, failure mechanisms, and the implications of construction quality and maintenance practices, grounding classroom learning in lived experience and contemporary professional realities.
A defining feature of CEGE0125 is its deep and sustained industry integration. The module is built around a term‑long live brief with Arup, who provide active or recent adaptive reuse projects complete with legacy drawings, investigation datasets, client requirements, and sustainability targets. Engineers from WJE, Ramboll, AKT II, TC Associates and specialist conservation practices further contribute, giving students access to a rich cross‑section of professional expertise. This level of engagement - far beyond conventional guest lectures - ensures students develop genuine readiness for practice and understand how adaptive reuse decisions play out under real constraints.
Yasemin’s leadership extends internationally. She serves as the Deputy Chair of the UNESCO Chair in Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience Engineering, contributing to global efforts to strengthen resilience education, capacity‑building, and evidence‑based approaches to risk reduction. Combined with her EEFIT role, this positions her at the interface of research, education, and international policy.
CEGE0125 has rapidly become one of UCL’s most impactful modules in sustainability and retrofit and is now a core component of UCL’s MSc in Sustainable Structural Engineering, reflecting the institutional view that adaptive reuse and diagnostic capability are foundational for modern structural engineering practice. Student feedback consistently highlights the transformative experience of working with real data, the breadth of practitioner insight, and the development of professional judgement rarely cultivated in traditional curricula.
Across her research, teaching, and international leadership, Yasemin advances a vision of structural engineering that is investigative, interdisciplinary, sustainability‑anchored, and socially engaged. Her Adaptive Reuse module - conceived, built, and continuously strengthened through deep industry collaboration and direct field evidence - exemplifies this mission and is shaping a new generation of engineers capable of stewarding the existing building stock with technical rigour, imagination, and civic purpose.