Tharindu Karunaratne is a Lecturer in the Built Environment subject area within the School of Architecture, Technology, and Engineering at the University of Brighton. He completed his PhD at City University of Hong Kong, where he also served as a Teaching Assistant in the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering.

He has served as a member of the scientific committee for the International Conference on Facilities Management Futures 2025: Safety-Enabled and Sustainable Facilities.

He also contributes as a reviewer for several academic journals, including:

• Energy and Buildings
• Built Environment Project and Asset Management (BEPAM)
• Intelligent Buildings International

My research focuses on the energy efficiency of buildings, carbon management in the built environment, fire safety in sustainable building features, and the digital twinning of the built environment. I am interested in both field studies conducted in real-life settings and experimental investigations using scaled physical models. I also use numerical methods to predict building energy demand, as well as fire and smoke spread behavior. In addition, I explore the integration of digital twins and the Internet of Things (IoT) with Building Information Modeling (BIM) to improve the energy performance and carbon management of buildings.

I am interested in taking on new PhD students in following areas:

• Energy efficiency of buildings
• Digital twins in the built environment
• Fire performance of sustainable building features
• Carbon management in the built environment 

I currently teach practical subjects such as building surveying and sustainable construction at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. I believe that each student learns in a way that is unique to them, so I use a variety of techniques, tools, and methods to support different learning styles. I teach mainly practical topics, so I place strong emphasis on connecting theory with practice. I make use of real-life scenarios, field visits, survey practicals, guest lectures from industry experts, and workshops. Through these approaches, I aim to prepare students as fully as possible for the challenges they will encounter when they graduate and enter the profession.