Dr. Nancy Ma has received the prestigious IBPSA-USA 2026 Emerging Contributor Award, which recognizes an early-career individual who has demonstrated strong potential for significant contributions to the field of building simulation This recognition highlights Dr. Ma’s growing contributions to building performance simulation, human-centered building modeling, climate resilience, healthy buildings, and AI-enabled approaches for understanding how buildings affect people’s daily experiences,…
Dr. Ma participated as a panelist in the “Debate: Artificial Intelligence in Building Simulation” session at SimBuild, organized by Dr. Tarek Rakha. The debate brought together leading voices in the building performance simulation community, including Dr. Michael Wetter, Dr. Wangda Zuo, and Dr. Alpha Yacob Arsano, to discuss the rapidly evolving role of artificial intelligence in building simulation. The session…
HERB-Lab congratulates Vivienne Evans on her outstanding achievement in receiving the WPI Provost Award for her Major Qualifying Project, “What Makes a Home?” Vivienne was also selected as a finalist for the Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering Department Advisory Board Award, reflecting the exceptional quality, creativity, and impact of her work. Vivienne’s MQP explored the meaning of home through the…
PI Ma participated in the “Annex 95” planning workshop held in Boston, hosted at Northeastern University. The workshop brought together researchers and practitioners to discuss the development of a proposed international research network on Human-Centric Buildings for a Changing Climate. The workshop focused on emerging research needs at the intersection of building performance, occupant behavior, climate resilience, indoor environmental quality,…
I am excited to share that Dr. Yalin Lu, a Postdoc Fellow at the HERB-Lab, has been awarded “EXCELLENT VIDEO” (second prize) in the 2023 Postdoc Video Challenge, “Addressing Grand Challenges,” hosted by the journal Buildings & Cities. Yalin’s video entry, titled “Designing a Healthcare Built Environment That Cares for All Children,” effectively conveys the message that we need to…
HERB-Lab presented recent research on climate-resilient buildings and indoor air quality at two major international conferences: IBPSA Building Simulation 2023 in Shanghai, China, and CISBAT 2023 in Lausanne, Switzerland. At IBPSA Building Simulation 2023, PI Ma and PhD candidate Qi Zhang presented HERB-Lab’s research on resilient housing and climate change. The study examined how passive architectural infrastructure can help mitigate…
HERB-Lab director, Nancy Ma, was invited to join the IBPSA BS2023 Poster Award Committee. Look forward to listening to various poster presentations on building performance simulation!
I am excited to welcome YALIN LU as a postdoc fellow to our HERB-Lab. We will continue to advance our mission of creating healthier and more sustainable environments for all. Welcome to the team and already looking forward to your contributions to this important field!
HERB-Lab director, Nancy Ma, was invited to join the Technical Program Committee (TPC) for the 10th ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Buildings, Cities, and Transportation (BuildSys 2023).
HERB-Lab director, Nancy Ma, presented her research work to one of the most famous indoor environment labs at the Center for the Built Environment, UC Berkeley WeLL Seminar. It was so much fun sharing the topic of human dimensions of building performance that she is most passionate about with the CBE students and researchers.
