Professor Rachael Rothman

Rachael Rothman is Grantham Centre Co-Director and supervises a number of Grantham Scholars. As well as being our Co-Director, Rachael was part of Plastics: Redefining Single-Use and is now part of Many Happy Returns. Both of these are Grantham Centre multidisciplinary research projects with a focus on reuse.

Born and brought up in Teesside, Rachael graduated from the University of Cambridge with a first class MEng in Chemical Engineering. She spent a year in Sweden before embarking on her PhD at the University of Sheffield.

In 2013 Rachael led the engineering department’s successful Athena SWAN silver award submission. Between 2014 – 2017 she was the Faculty Director for Women in Engineering, leading the faculty’s equality and diversity activities. She has twice taken a year of maternity leave following the birth of her sons. In 2022 she became a Professor of Sustainable Chemical Engineering.

You can find Rachael on Twitter.

South Yorkshire Sustainability Centre

Rachael Rothman is now the director of the new £13m South Yorkshire Sustainability Centre (£5m funding from Research England). Over the last couple of years Rachael has worked with TUoS, researchers from Sheffield Hallam, the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority, the 4 local authorities and businesses and industry in the region to put this centre together.

Find out more about the South Yorkshire Sustainability Centre in this video ↓

Sustainability at The University of Sheffield

Rachael also is the Academic Lead for Sustainability across the whole of the University of Sheffield. Find out more about sustainability at Sheffield. She spearheads the strategy and plan to make the University more sustainable.

Notable results include that from 2023 to 2021, scope 1 and 2 emissions have dropped by 37%.

Rachael Rothman news

Our director Professor Rachael Rothman is the director of the new South Yorkshire Sustainability Centre. This groundbreaking centre will work across South Yorkshire on a range of sustainability issues from an evidence-based and multidisciplinary perspective.

IChemE Hutchison Medal for our Many Happy Returns team. Rachael and the team from Many Happy Returns win prestigious award in 2022.

Our co-director speaks about plastic waste to EFRA committee. In 2022 Rachael gave evidence to an EFRA committee about plastic waste.

COP26 Universities Network briefing from our Co-Director. Rachael contributes to a briefing from the COP26 Universities Network.

Dr Rachael Rothman is new Grantham Centre director. We’re pleased to welcome Dr Rachael Rothman to the Grantham Centre as a new director! In 2018, Rachael joins our Operations Team and Management Board. Plus she is supervising a number of Grantham Scholars.

Find out even more about Rachael’s work at the Grantham Centre in our annual reports.