After nearly 30 years at DMU, Umesh’s career shake-up takes him 20 miles across the East Midlands from Leicester to Nottingham in a shift that has surprised many colleagues.

“Surprising yourself is sometimes a good thing too,” Umesh said. “I’ve felt immense loyalty to DMU for a career that has given me every opportunity I could have imagined, and there are landmark projects at the university that I’ve been proud to steer to fruition, including the award-winning Vijay Patel Building, the Leicester Castle Business School and many more. The move to NTU represents a really exciting challenge. Nottingham as a city is at the forefront of the UK’s drive towards net zero carbon, with a progressive city council and ambitious carbon targets right across the public sphere. The city’s universities play a key role in shaping these endeavours and in harnessing public enthusiasm and activity around all aspects of the sustainability agenda, including via the AUDE Award-winning Green Rewards scheme. The Universities for Nottingham civic initiative makes sure we align with our partners at the University of Nottingham and others in genuinely impactful ways and I’m looking forward to quickly building meaningful relationships in this space. It’s an exciting role at a great university.”

Scanning the universities horizon, Desai commented: “There are big headaches for estates teams at the moment – huge inflation in building materials is undercutting affordability on virtually every project, rapid changes to student and staff expectations of campus during the pandemic have not yet all played out to a resolution, and the cost of moving to net zero carbon is huge – Birmingham University has recently costed that at £300m for itself alone.”