Dr Sahar Nava

I am the founding director of SNA[rchitecture] and a transdisciplinary researcher, specialist, designer, and educator. My work spans holistic sustainability in the built environment, addressing sustainable construction materials; techniques; and strategies, climate change adaptation and mitigation, modern methods of construction (MMC), and the interconnection and co-benefits of environmental, socioeconomic, health, wellbeing, and behavioural impacts. My research approach has been focused on participatory and mixed-methods research to reduce inequalities and improve lifecycle environmental and socioeconomic benefits, particularly implementing Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) for decision-making. I have a wide range of experience in participatory action research (PAR), creative practice, art-based research (AbR), qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods research, and in implementing co-design, co-creation, and co-production into research. Currently Principal Investigator for the UCL Grand Challenges of Inequality ECR Awards, and have larger funding proposals submitted (under consideration) and in preparation. My research also integrates AI and computational methods across sustainability, design and the built environment. This includes agent-based and agentic workflows, NLP and machine learning for qualitative, quantitative and mixed-methods analysis, geospatial and multimodal AI, computer vision, 3D generative AI for spatial and design exploration, and AI-supported simulation and optimisation. I am also interested in applications of AI to LCA/LCSA, and participatory research, alongside responsible and ethical Human–AI interaction, including questions of bias, transparency, trust and human judgement.