Meet the Urban Lab team
Stephanie De Mel, PhD
Steph is a Senior Economist and Head of the Urban Lab. Her main research interests include labour markets and skills, local industrial regeneration, and the economics of cities. She also specialises in programme evaluation.
Bilaal Hussain, PhD
Bilaal is a Senior Climate Emergency Analyst. He works directly to support the Climate Emergency team in helping the council to achieve its net zero carbon targets. His main interests are energy decarbonisation, whole systems analysis, and behavioural insights.
Kirsten Zeller, MSc, MA
Kirsten is the council’s Smart City Strategic Lead. Her background is in urban analytics, qualitative research and smart city policy. She has helped shape university-council collaboration for the past 5 years, in particular related to applied data science, open data and place-based transformation schemes.
Aidan Jones, BA
Aidan is a project officer in the council’s Smart City team, leading on projects that improve air quality and help to achieve Westminster’s net zero targets. He previously worked on a number of initiatives supporting local businesses during the pandemic. His interests include green innovation and political economy.
Hrabrina Nikolova, MSc
Hrabrina is a Principal Sustainability Officer advising various Town Planning teams around issues of Net Zero Carbon, Whole Life Carbon, Circular Economy and sustainable design and construction. Hrabrina studied Architecture and Environmental Design at the University of Westminster, and most recently obtained a certificate in Circular Economy for Sustainable Built Environment from TU Delft, Netherlands.
Ethan Knights, PhD
Ethan is a Data Scientist working closely with the council’s service teams to develop architectural solutions, typically involving applied-statistics and machine-learning. He originally trained in Cognitive Neuroscience and has a background managing public open-data platforms.
Paridhi Moondhra, MSc
Paridhi is an economist in the Strategy and Intelligence team. She analyses how different policy decisions may affect people and communities within Westminster and their possible outcomes. She also supports in organising the Urban Lab’s ongoing seminar series.
Alaa Abuesba, MSc
Alaa is the Strategy and Intelligence Coordinator in the council’s strategy and intelligence team. She is responsible for providing project and programme support to the team, managing data platforms like the Intelligence Hub and fostering collaboration through the Urban Lab partnership. Alaa has a bachelor’s degree in psychology and an MSc from SOAS University in Conflict and Development.
Oscar Maclagan, MSc
Oscar is a social researcher in the Strategy and Intelligence team. He works with teams across the council to conduct primary research to better understand Westminster's residents, businesses, workers, and visitors. Oscar holds an MSc from UCL in Global Migration, an interdisciplinary degree that studies the movement of people through a range of academic disciplines, such as economics, sociology, and cultural studies.