Rodd founded and directed the Netwell Centre, within the School of Health and Science at DkIT until 2019. He graduated in architecture from Oxford Brookes University in 1982 launching a career that spanned hospital master planning in the USA and Pakistan, to ageing-and-place research and innovation in Europe. Rodd’s core interest is ‘design as systematics’, and the relationship between environmental structure and peoples’ health and wellbeing.
Rodd supported the formative stages of the WHO’s age-friendly cities movement and is committed to human development through place-making, and technology for social innovation. Rodd supported the European Commission in the development of the first Action Plan for Innovations in Age-Friendly Buildings, Cities and Environments, within the European Innovation Partnership on Active & Healthy Ageing. Since 2019, Rodd has been working independently across design practice, policy and research in the public, private and NGO sectors.