(June 1, 2022 to May 31, 2024)
| Burak Gunay President |
Carleton University (Ottawa, Ontario) |
| Karine Lavigne Vice-president |
Hydro-Québec (Shawinigan, Quebec) |
| Adam Wills Secretary |
NRC – Construction Research Centre (Ottawa, Ontario) |
| Mohamed Ouf Treasurer |
Concordia University (Montreal, Quebec) |
| Umberto Berardi | Ryerson University (Toronto, Ontario) |
| Sebastián Carrizo | DIALOG (Toronto, Ontario) |
| Yuxiang Chen | University of Alberta (Edmonton, Alberta) |
| Ralph Evins | University of Victoria (Victoria, British Columbia) |
| Andrea Pietila | RDH Building Science (Toronto, Ontario) |
| Eoghan Hayes | Edge Sustainability Consulting (Vancouver, British Columbia) |
| Rasoul Asaee | Natural Resources Canada (Ottawa, Ontario) |
| Dahai Qi | University of Sherbrooke (Sherbrooke, Quebec) |
| Patrick Lapierre | BPA (Montreal, Quebec) |
| David Rulff | WSP (Toronto, Ontario) |
| Rebecca Pinto | Carleton University (Ottawa, Ontario) |
Burak Gunay is an Associate Professor at Carleton University in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. His research examines methods to optimize the operation of commercial buildings for comfort and energy use. He uses the operational data gathered inside modern automation and control networks to learn from the occupants’ comfort, behaviour, and presence patterns. Using operational data, he employs inverse modelling to characterize building equipment operation and the envelope performance. Aside from field-scale data analyses, his research commonly uses building performance simulation.
Karine Lavigne is a researcher and project manager at the Laboratoire des Technologies de l’Énergie (LTE) of Hydro-Quebec Research Institute since 2005. She is actively working to increase the energy efficiency of commercial and institutional buildings though the development of continuous commissioning and energy simulation tools. Karine participated in the development of simulation software “SIMEB” an interface to EnergyPlus and DOE2 energy simulation engines. She published several scientific papers related to the building energy simulation, model calibration and management of power peak demand. Karine completed her undergraduate studies in mechanical engineering and her master degree in mechanical engineering-Latent and Sensible thermal energy storage at the University of Sherbrooke. She is also a member of the Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec.
Adam Wills is a Research Council Officer at the National Research Council Canada – Construction Research Centre. His current research is focused on simulation of new and existing residential building stock to explore impacts of potential changes to the National Building Code, and to provide technical feedback to building code committees. Analysis is conducted using the Housing Technology Assessment Platform developed by CanmetENERGY-Ottawa, and ESP-r. Adam received his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Windsor, and a MASc and PhD at Carleton University. His master’s research used co-simulation of ESP-r and TRNSYS to evaluate the technical feasibility of residential seasonal solar thermal systems in Canadian homes. His PhD research used the Canadian Hybrid Residential End-Use Energy and GHG Emissions Model (CHREM) and particle swarm optimization to study cost-optimal retrofit solutions for converting existing residential communities to net-zero.
Mohamed Ouf is an Assistant Professor at Concordia University’s Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering department. He is the principal investigator of the Intelligent Buildings and Communities Lab (IBCL) and a member of Concordia’s Centre for Zero Energy Building Studies (CZEBS) as well as the newly established Next-Generation Cities Cluster. His research focuses on using data-driven approaches to investigate occupant-building interactions at multiple scales, ranging from zone- to building-level and up to urban scales. He is actively involved in several academic and professional organizations; including the International Energy Agency (IEA) Annex 79: Occupant-Centric Building Design and Operation, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE).
Umberto Berardi is a Professor at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University). His main research interests are related to the study of building systems that incorporate new nanotechnologies for improved performance. He has mainly focused on organic PCMs, such as paraffin and bio-PCM, and on granular and monolithic aerogel. Dr. Berardi has an extensive publication record, including over 100 peer-reviewed journals. His awards include: the Early Research Career Excellence Award, Ryerson University, 2018, the Best Italian Engineer in North America award by the ISSNAF (Italian Scientists and Scholars in North America Foundation) in Washington in 2016; and the Best Technical Award in the NESEA competition by the US Department of in Boston in 2014. Dr. Berardi has a body of funded research comprising over $1.5M in government and private sector sponsored research. In the last two years, he has been awarded a CFI-JELF; NSERC Discovery Grant; Early Research Award from the MRI – Ontario; Building Excellence Research and Education Grants from the BC Housing; OCE-VIP projects; and several NSERC Engages.
Sebastián Carrizo is an Senior Building Performance Consultant within DIALOG’s sustainable design group. In Sebastián’s current position he works on projects in pursuit of various sustainability and energy objectives, with the majority of his work revolving around: energy analysis and modelling, daylight modelling and analysis, passive design, the Toronto Green Standard, energy incentive coordination, and sustainability. Sebastián holds a B.Eng. from The Intituto Tecnologico de Buenos Aires (Argentina), and an M. Eng. from Carleton University.
Yuxiang Chen is an associate professor in the School of Building Science and Engineering, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. His research expertise is on high performance buildings, with focuses on energy efficiency and peak demand reduction through thermal energy storage, daylighting, robust controls, utilization of renewable energy, and their integrated design and operation. He was a key researcher in the Industrial Research Chair for “Optimized Operation and Energy Efficiency: towards High Performance Buildings” funded by NSERC and Hydro Québec, before he Joined the University of Alberta in July, 2015. Dr. Chen has participated in the International Energy Agency (IEA) Tasks “Economical Heating and Cooling Systems for Low Energy Houses” and “Towards Net-Zero Energy Buildings”, and is currently involved in another task “Energy Flexible Buildings”.
Ralph Evins is an associate professor at the University of Victoria, leading a group investigating the application of computational techniques (simulation, optimization, machine learning) to energy use in cities (buildings and urban energy systems). Current projects include the use of machine learning in data-driven building control and the development of an online portal for energy systems optimization. Ralph completed an MEng in Civil and Environment Engineering at Imperial College London, then an Engineering Doctorate on “Multi-objective optimisation as an aid to design space exploration for low-carbon buildings” at the University of Bristol, UK, together with the industry partner Buro Happold. After this he was a post-doctoral researcher then Group Leader at the Urban Energy Systems laboratory at Empa / ETH Zurich in Switzerland, leading development of the Holistic Urban Energy Simulation platform for the ‘Future Energy Efficient Buildings and Districts’ project. He is a Chartered Engineer with CIBSE and an IBPSA-World Projects Committee member.
Andrea Pietila is currently working as an Energy and Sustainability Analyst at RDH Building Science, working with a team of energy modellers and building enclosure specialists to make buildings better. Andrea’s work at RDH is focused on “buildings that perform” – such as net zero, Passive House, and LEED certified buildings. She works on a variety of building types in the commercial, institutional and residential sectors, and covers both new construction and deep energy retrofit projects. Andrea has a B.Eng and an M.A.Sc. from Carleton University in Ottawa. Her thesis research employed building performance simulation to examine the feasibility of eliminating electrical draws from houses during periods of high demand on the central electrical system, a concept known as “zero peak housing”. Outside of building performance simulation, Andrea likes to play beach volleyball and spikeball, and enjoys concerts and listening to podcasts.
Eoghan Hayes is a Principal at Edge Sustainability Consulting located in the Vancouver area, British Columbia. He has extensive experience in energy modelling, indoor air quality, sustainability, and healthy buildings.
Rasoul Asaee is a research scientist at the CanmetENERGY-Ottawa research center of Natural Resources Canada. CanmetENERGY is Canada’s leading research and technology organization in the field of clean energy. His main research interests include building stock modeling, energy-efficient retrofits, and embodied carbon of buildings. Current projects include the development of data, tools, and evidence to support the impact analysis of national building codes, development of optimized retrofit scenarios for existing houses, and residential end-use energy mapping. He has authored several peer-reviewed publications related to building performance simulation, housing stock analysis, and alternative energy systems.
In addition to having worked at CanmetENERGY-Ottawa, Dr. Asaee has worked at the Clean Energy Research Centre of the University of British Columbia and Siemens Canada. He has led research projects to assess the greenhouse gas emissions of natural gas systems for residential buildings and remote communities..
Dahai Qi is an Assistant Professor at Université de Sherbrooke in Building Engineering. Dr. Qi focuses on the study of building safety and resilient cooling and heating technologies. As a PI, he holds the CFI-John R. Evans Leaders Fund, NSERC Discovery Grants Program, FRQNT-New Researcher Program, etc. He is the leader of Subtask C-Field Studies for the IEA-EBC Annex80 Project-Resilient Cooling of Buildings. He is the guest editor of many journals, such as Journal of Energy and Building, etc. He was a secretary of 5th?International Conference on Building Energy and Environment.
Patrick Lapierre graduated from École Polytechnique de Montréal in 2010 and has since been actively working for BPA on improving mechanical design efficiency using energy modeling. He has participated in a wide range of major projects in Quebec including new hospitals to complete rehabilitation of office building campuses and carbon neutral studies. He is actively engaged in promoting energy modeling (including teaching a certificate class at his former university) and strives to drive every project he works on towards the path of energy and carbon efficiency.
David Rulff joined WSP at their Toronto office in 2012, and has worked in the Climate Change, Resilience and Sustainability group for over 10 years as an energy performance technical lead and project manager. David is also currently a PhD candidate at the University of Victoria with the Energy in Cities group, under the supervision of Prof. Ralph Evins. His research explores the application of component surrogate modeling and uncertainty quantification to improve best practice in building simulation. Previously, David graduated with his B.A.Sc. in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo; he completed his M.A.Sc. in Civil Engineering at the University of Toronto in 2011, working with Prof. Chris Kennedy and Enwave Energy on optimization of distributed district energy systems.
Rebecca Pinto is a PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering at Carleton University. After completing her Bachelors and Masters degrees in Chemical Engineering (University of Alberta, Ecole des Mines de Paris), she worked in industry for a few years, designing industrial heat exchangers, troubleshooting tailings systems in the Alberta oil sands, and working as a consultant in the sustainable building industry. She is currently researching sand-based seasonal thermal energy storage for residential homes. Rebecca loves getting people excited about heat transfer, physics, and all things science-related. She is an avid yogi, balcony gardener, and Professional Engineer (Alberta).