Alexandra Rempel
University of Oregon, OR·Engineering
Heating and cooling are the single largest energy use in US buildings and a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Buildings can also draw on free climate resources: winter sun for heat, cool outdoor air and cold night skies for cooling.
- Fields
Engineering
Earth & Environmental Science
Computer Science
- Topics
passive heating
passive cooling
dynamic passive systems
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through May 2027
What they work on
- Build a design tool that picks climate-specific materials and layouts for passive heating and cooling systems by linking structured numerical optimization with existing building energy modeling programs.
- Train deep reinforcement learning agents (software that learns control rules by trial and error) to operate shading, ventilation and night insulation in response to climate, weather and occupants, and test prototypes in simulations and testbeds.
- Develop physics-informed machine learning models, called locally interactive bilinear flow models, that respect energy and mass conservation, and prove mathematical guarantees for learning and control algorithms built on them.
- Coordinate windows, shading and fans with existing HVAC systems using sensor data, weather and energy forecasts, and occupant preferences, and demonstrate the controllers in occupied buildings.
- Create a systematic method to estimate how much free heating and cooling from sun, outdoor air and night sky can be captured by intelligently operated passive systems.
More about the research
'Dynamic passive' systems, which manage windows, shading, night insulation and fans, can use these resources to cut heating and cooling needs. They can also keep buildings livable during heatwaves, cold snaps and power outages. Their benefit depends on choosing the right components for each climate and operating them at the right moments, and good tools for both tasks are lacking. These grants develop design and control tools that combine building energy modeling with artificial intelligence.
Why it matters
Better design and control of passive heating and cooling could lower energy bills and greenhouse gas emissions from homes and other buildings. The grants highlight affordable housing, where such systems could cut costs in normal times and keep occupants safer during heatwaves, cold snaps and power outages. Architects, building operators and the green building industry could use the resulting design software, control hardware and services.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jan Kleissl
University of California-San Diego, CA·Engineering
Build DERConnect, a remote-access testbed that integrates solar panels, battery storage, electric vehicles, wind and solar emulators, and controllable building lighting and HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) systems.
Julian Wang
Pennsylvania State University, PA·Engineering·Early-career
Decompose global solar irradiance into its spectral bands to build a time-dependent model of near-infrared (NIR) light, the invisible heat-carrying part of sunlight, reaching building windows.
Olga Lauter
University of Texas at El Paso, TX·Engineering
Investigate how socio-cultural factors shape housing construction and energy use in two Alaska Native communities in the Bristol Bay region, using needs assessments and community workshops.
The school
University of Oregon: 14 labs on PI Pages, $175M a year on research, 219 research doctorates a year.
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