Colin John Cunningham

FRSA CBiol CEnv MIBiol MIEnvSc

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Welcome to my personal web pages  
I'm an environmental scientist born in Edinburgh, Scotland. I grew up in the village of Roslin about 7 miles South of Edinburgh but have lived in Leith since 1989. I'm 39 years old and married to Dr Tanya Peshkur since 2002. We met in Perm, Russia in 1999 when I was collaborating with the Laboratory of alkanotrophic microorganisms at the Institute of Ecology and Genetics of Microorganisms (IEGM) where she was doing her PhD. We don't have any children (yet).
About my work

I started my career in the contaminated land field and in particular on bioremediation of contaminated soils.

 

Over the last decade my interests have expanded to include water & wastewater treatment, resource efficiency/waste management, Sustainable Urban Drainage System (SUDS) and most recently renewable energy e.g. biomass boilers and organic Rankine cycle engines. 

 

 

I am the Director of the Scottish Environmental Technology Network (SETN) funded by the Scottish Government. SETN supports the Environmental Goods & Services sector in Scotland and we work closely with Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) from our home in the School of Engineering at The University of Edinburgh. 

 


  
 

What's new?
I'm the co-inventor of a water filtration system known as the Advanced Treatment Station (ATS) sold by H2ology Ltd. The system was developed to remove contamination from road runoff, car parks, vehicle wash sites and so on. The ATS  was also designed to be used as part of Sustainable Urban Drainage System (SUDS).
 
A complete package for gully waste and road sweepings treatment (known as the ATS Treatment and Recycling Plant (TARP) is shown below. All of the water is recycled and rainwater is harvested from roofs to wash/fill gully trucks. The solids can be further processed to give a useful aggregate and give an overall 95% recycling rate. This greatly reduces landfill disposal. See H2ology Ltd for more information.