Civil Engineering PhD student Seungjae Lee was recently named recipient of the prestigious ASHRAE Grant-in-Aid Award for 2017-2018. This $10,000 award is given to the most outstanding graduate students performing research in the High Performance Buildings or HVAC fields. The American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning Engineers considers applications from all over the world.

Lee is advised by Prof. Panagiota Karava and Prof. Thanos Tzempelikos. His research project is titled, “Classification and inference of occupant thermal preferences in office buildings using a Bayesian approach.” The objective of this work is to employ smart environmental control strategies in buildings with self-tuned thermal comfort delivery systems, based on new learning algorithms.

The goal of the Grant-In-Aid program is to encourage outstanding graduate students to become involved in research relevant to ASHRAE and establish careers that include active engagement and continued contributions to Society activities in the Buildings and HVAC&R fields. The evaluation criteria include academic performance, quality and significance of the student’s research, and overall assessment of the likelihood for future involvement within ASHRAE.