About

With Challenging Habitat, I redirect my focus to share the fruits of rich experiences I am fortunate to have made in the contexts of engineering consultancy, academia and life.

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The Challenging Habitat logo was designed by Tom Bevan.

Charlotte Braungardt

I love immersing myself in nature, and as an engineer and environmental scientist, I want to know how it works – at all scales. Discovering and learning is as stimulating as it is exciting to share this process and the questions that remain with others.

The deeper purpose of learning and sharing goes beyond self-indulgence and personal growth, it is about empowerment to find solutions to today’s pressing challenges – sustainable development, ecosystem health, climate change.

Communication is key to all of this.

I provide services related to:

Professional experience:

Associate Professor Environmental Science
University of Plymouth, UK
(2002-2021)
For a number of years, I worked part-time in research, while also gaining experience as a lecturer, leading to successful application for a permanent position in 2006. Teaching on BSc Environmental Science, BSc Environmental Management and Sustainability and MSc Marine Science and MSc Environmental Consultancy courses provided me with plenty of cause to broaden my subject interests, including environmental chemistry, catchment science, systems thinking and sustainable waste and resource management. As Programme Lead, I led the team in a fundamental renewal of the Environmental Science degree course, leading to my promotion to Associate Professor in 2013. I had a lot of fun setting up a science communication module with my colleague Dr Alison Stokes and recently, my most rewarding initiatives included introducing personal development activities, such as leadership training and resilience education into the curriculum. I was involved in designing and running many hands-on, experiential learning opportunity in workshops, laboratories, excursions and residential field courses in the UK and overseas, which for me remain the most successful and important elements of education. I remained actively involved in research of contamination and remediation of metalliferous mine sites and associated aquatic systems going, published academic papers and accompanied PhD, MSc and BSc students on their path to theses and dissertations. I am grateful for all I have learned a lot from my colleagues and, in particular, from my students.

Research Contracts
University of Montpellier II, France
(Winter 2014/15)
During this short sabbatical of four months I was privileged to work with one of the leading biogeochemistry research groups with Dr Corinne Casiot, Dr Marina Héry and Prof Françoise Elbaz-Poulichet on the project IngECOST-DMA (Ingénierie écologique appliquée à la gestion intégrée de stériles et drainages miniers acides riches en arsenic or Eco-engineery applied to integrated management of As-rich tailings and acid mine drainage). I was funded by the CNRS.

University of Plymouth, UK
(1996 – 2003)
After completing a second first degree in Environmental Science (1996), I obtained my PhD in 2000 for research on metal biogeochemistry of a mine contaminated estuarine-coastal system in southwest Spain as part of the Tinto Odiel River Ocean Study (TOROS), funded by the European Commission (DGXII) under contract ENV4-CT96-0217, Environment and Climate Programme. This was followed by post-doctoral research on In situ automated monitoring of trace metal speciation in estuaries and coastal zones, in relation with the biogeochemical processes (IMTEC), where I developed applications and inter-comparison exercise with the Voltammetric in-situ Probe (VIP, Idronaut, Milan), funded by the European Commission EESD Programme – Contract n° EVK3-CT-2000-00036.

Project Engineering
Lurgi GmBH, Frankfurt, Germany
(1990-1993)
I obtained my first degree in electrical engineering and communication electronics at the University for Applied Technology Würzburg-Schweinfurt and honed my skills and knowledge by working for the consultancy Lurgi AG, with a focus on measuring and control engineering. Notable project: working in a interdisciplinary team on building a pharmaceutical plant for Schering in Berlin, where my role started with the specification and selection of the process control system and ended with debugging, commissioning and training of staff in its operation.