Alan is the Dean of the Bartlett faculty of the Built Environment, a HEFCE Business Fellow and a founding director of  Space Syntax Ltd,  a UCL knowledge transfer spin out with a portfolio of over 100 applied projects per year, including whole city masterplans, neighbourhood development plans and individual buildings. He is a member of the Space Group, an EPSRC Platform funded research group. He was the founding Chair of the RIBA’s Research and Innovation Committee, and served in that role until 2006. He was Chair of the Architecture & the Built Environment sub-panel 30 for the UK National Research Assessment Exercise 2008, and a member of its Main Panel H. He is the Chair of the Architecture, Built Environment and Planning sub-panel 16 and a member of Main-panel C for the Research Excellence Framework 2014. He was the lead academic on the £5m  Urban Buzz: Building Sustainable Communities  knowledge exchange programme which promoted more sustainable forms of urban development and intensification in London and the greater South East Region of the UK. He was Principal Investigator on the  City History and Multi-scale Spatial Master-planning  UK-China Research Network, 国际研究网络：城市历史与多尺度的空间整体规划, funded by the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, will develop UK-Chinese academic research collaboration. He is a trustee of the  Shakespeare North Trust   and of the  Institute for Sustainability.