Nan (Nancy) Ma, PhD, Assoc. AIA

Assistant Professor of Architectural Engineering

Nan (Nancy) Ma, Ph.D., Assoc. AIA, is an Assistant Professor of Architectural Engineering at CEAE. Her work investigates the integration of architectural, environmental, and computational knowledge to advance healthy, sustainable, and occupant-centric buildings. In pursuing this objective, her research applies multi-disciplinary simulation, experimental, and field study approaches using both objective and subjective measures. Specifically, her research interests include building performance for thermal comfort and energy efficiency, design for building occupants and behavior, IoT smart buildings and big data, and related indoor air/environmental quality field studies. Ma has led multiple interdisciplinary research projects in collaboration with various fields ranging from public health, biostatistics, computer science, mechanical engineering, to pediatric psychology. She has been awarded the 2021 Best Paper Award from the highly regarded journalBuilding and Environment and has received research funds from Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, GAPSA-Provost Fellowship for Interdisciplinary Innovation, and Penn ResearchTransition Fund. Prior to joining WPI, Ma held an appointment at the University of Melbourne and taught all levels of instruction across schools in Australia and the United States. She worked as a research associate at the Center for Environmental Building & Design and the Thermal Architecture Lab at Penn. Ma holds a PhD in Architecture (building technology track) from the University of Pennsylvania, a Master of Architecture, and a Bachelor of Environments from the University of Melbourne, Australia.