Health and wellbeing specialist Victoria Lockhart has announced she is leaving her role at global design, engineering and consultancy firm Arup to take up a position at the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI).

Lockhart is a leading researcher in the field of wellness design, specialising in the role technology plays in accurately establishing how the new generation of sustainable buildings will affect the people who use them.

IWBI administers the WELL Building Standard, an evidence-based system for measuring, certifying and monitoring the performance of building features that impact health and wellbeing.

In her new role, based in London, Lockhart will continue to advise on sustainable green building practices across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

At Arup, she helped develop the firm’s virtual reality programmes, designed with biometric sensors to find out how people react to spaces before they’re built. She also worked on the Arup Sound Lab, in which clients can experience what their building will sound like before a single brick is laid.

Speaking in a panel session at last year’s Global Wellness Summit in Austria, moderated by CLAD editor Liz Terry,/a> Lockhart explained how modern technologies mean “we no longer have to be neuroscientists to understand how people are perceiving different environments.”

This is the latest appointment by IWBI, following its appointment of US Green Building Council founding chair Rick Fedrizzi as its CEO last November.