Prof. Dr.

Marco Ivaldi, Ph.D.

University of Turin

Fifth Keynote:    16/12    17.15-18.30

Marco Ivaldi obtained his PhD in Complex Systems in Medicine and Life Sciences on medical physiopathology, honoured by the Royal University of Turin for his dissertation: Prediction of sports injuries through psychological testing. He is a professor in Neurophysiology of Movement, Methodology of Human Movement, Bases of Human Movement, Techniques of Sports and physiology in relation to the presence of  pollutants and in extreme situations.

His research focuses also on quantitative electroencephalographic analysis, movement-related neuroscience, and neuromarketing at the University of Turin.

He is co-founder of we-sport.com, a major sports social network, and is currently founder and vice-president of aGrisù Srl, an academic spin-off focused on creating tools for monitoring human uptake of air pollutants, including those related to sport.

Prof. Dr.

M. Pinar Mengüç, Ph.D.

Center for Energy, Environment and Economy

Ozyegin University

Third Keynote:    16/12    12.00-13.15

Director of the Center for Energy, Environment and Economy (CEEE) and head of Mechanical Engineering Department. M. Pinar Mengüç, after graduating from Ankara Science High School, received his BS and MS degrees from ODTU/METU in Ankara, Turkey, and his PhD from Purdue University, USA in 1985. He joined to the University of Kentucky and promoted to the ranks of associate professor and professor in 1988 and 1993, respectively, and eventually selected as the Engineering Alumni Association Chair Professor in 2008. He was a visiting professor at Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Italy during 1991 and at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

He joined Özyeğin University, Istanbul in 2009 as the founding Head of Mechanical Engineering. The same year, he established the Centre for Energy, Environment and Economy. Mengüç’s research areas include radiative transfer, nanoscale transport phenomena, applied optics and sustainable energy applications. His research programs have been funded by more than 60 grants from several agencies in the US, in Europe and in Turkey. Over the years, he has guided more than 70 MS and PhD students, and post-docs researchers. He is the author/co-author of more than 150 archival papers, 220 conference publications, four books, and several book chapters. He holds six patents, including a triadic patent.

Fergus helped develop Masters courses on sustainability at Oxford Brookes and London Metropolitan Universities. Fergus convenes the Network for Comfort and Energy Use in Buildings. Fergus’ research interests are human comfort and discomfort in buildings, principally thermal comfort, energy efficiency and the relationship between the two. The implications of energy use and comfort for climate change and the effect of climate change on energy use and comfort. The ways in which the design of cities and buildings needs to adapt to allow for the effects of climate change.

Prof. Dr. Rajan Rawal, Ph.D.

Centre for Advanced Research in Building Science and Energy

First Keynote:    16/12    09.30-10.45

Rajan Rawal is a CRDF Professor at CEPT University and Senior Adviser at “Centre for Advanced Studies in Building Science and Energy” (CARBSE) at CEPT Research and Development Foundation (CRDF). He teaches energy-efficient built habitat, energy modelling, energy policy at the postgraduate level. His work emphasis is on ‘Energy Performance of Human Habitat’ and ‘Architectural and Building Science Education’. His current focus of the work is on Climate responsive and Passive building design Strategies, Net Zero Energy Buildings and Communities, Personal Thermal Comfort Systems and Practices of Adaptive Thermal Comfort Models.

Prof. Rawal led Indo-US Joint Clean Energy R&D Centre - Building Energy Efficiency Sector. He is an active member of the International Energy Agency’s various EBC Annexes and Chair Education at the International Building Performance Association (IBPSA). Prof Rajan Rawal has made remarkable contributions in the field of Energy Efficient building design and operation, passive design strategies, HVAC, occupant thermal comfort and Personal Thermal Comfort Systems. His contribution to the development of thermal comfort standards in India hugely impacted educational programs within the university and at the national level.

Prof. Dr. Manoj Kumar

Singh, Ph.D.

University of Ljubljana

Second Keynote:    16/12    10.45-12.00

Dr. Manoj Kumar Singh did his M.Tech. in Energy Technology from Tezpur University and Ph.D. in BioClimatic Building Design from the Indian Institute of Technology. His research interests are in the area of Thermal Comfort, Bioclimatic Building Design, and Sustainability, Building Energy Simulation, Energy Performance of Building Envelopes. His research on thermal comfort is included in ASHRAE Standard-55 2017. He is the recipient of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy Fellowship, Belgium, and JSPS Postdoctoral Fellowship.

He has worked with Prof. Richard de Dear, University of Sydney, Prof. Jacques Teller, University of Liege, Belgium, Prof. R. Ooka, The University of Tokyo, Japan, and Prof. H. B. Rijal, Tokyo City University, Japan. He has more than 70 scientific publications in reputed international journals and conferences, with an h index of 21. He is also Guest Editor of special issues of Sustainability and Energies journal and Review Editor of Frontiers in Mechanical Engineering, Frontiers in Built Environment, and Frontiers in Energy Research Journals.

Prof. Dr. Jørn Toftum, Ph.D.

Department of Civil Engineering

Technical University of Denmark DTU

Sixth Keynote:    17/12    15.30-16.45

Jørn Toftum is a professor in ventilation at the Technical University of Denmark. His research covers mainly the interaction between the indoor environment in buildings and human comfort, health and performance. This has involved numerous laboratory studies and comprehensive surveys in Danish daycare centres, schools, offices and dwellings to describe associations between indoor environment exposures and people's responses.

Recent activities focus on systems and methods for monitoring and control of building operation, occupant behavior, energy consumption, and indoor environment and on tools quantifying the wider benefits of improved indoor environment in schools, dwellings and offices.

Jørn Toftum holds a Ph.D. from DTU and has been a visiting researcher at UC Berkeley and at Tsinghua University.

Prof. Dr.

Andreas Wagner, Ph.D.

Institute for Building Design and Technology

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology KIT

Fourth Keynote:    16/12    14.45-16.00

Andreas Wagner, studied mechanical engineering at the University of Karlsruhe before he worked as a researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems in Freiburg for 8 years. Since 1995, he is a Full Professor at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), and head of the Building Science Group in the Department of Architecture. Besides teaching bachelor and master courses his research focuses on monitoring and analysis of building energy performance, solar-based integrated energy concepts as well as on comfort and occupant behaviour at workplaces.

Andreas Wagner has coordinated numerous third-party-funded national and international research projects over the last 25 years. He has (co-)supervised and examined 32 PhD Theses and was external examiner of 16 PhD Theses at other Universities. He is (co-)author of more than 150 publications and he also (co-) edited /wrote 6 scientific books. He was dean of the KIT-Department of Architecture twice and is currently vice-dean for research of the Department. Since 2018, he is Co-Operating Agent of the IEA EBC Annex 79 on ‘Occupant-Centric Building Design and Operation’.

Prof. Dr. Hui Zhang, Ph.D.

Center for the Built Environment

UC Berkeley

Eighth Keynote:    17/12    18.00-19.15

Prof. Hui Zhang is a professional researcher at the Center for the Built Environment at UC Berkeley. Her work focuses on human thermophysiology and thermal comfort to support the development of energy-efficient and individually controlled heating and cooling systems for buildings. Dr. Zhang has developed a body part specific model of human comfort for the evaluation of complex thermal environments and holds several patents for personal comfort systems. She has run many laboratory and field studies evaluating a wide range of topics.

Her knowledge ranges from fundamental physiology to the comfort and energy effectiveness of innovative building practices. Dr. Zhang holds a PhD in building science from the Department of Architecture at UC Berkeley (2003) and a M.S in Architecture (1986) and B.A. in Engineering (1983) from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. She received the ASHRAE Ralph Nevins Physiology and Human Environment Award for her PhD dissertation study, "Local Thermal Comfort in Asymmetrical and Transient Environments."