Our lab members represent a diverse range of interests and backgrounds. We strive to foster an open, transparent and collaborative environment to support our on-going research activities. If you are interested in joining our lab, check out our "Join the lab" page
Principal Investigator
Dr. Mohamed Ouf is the Director of the Intelligent Buildings and Cities Lab (IBCL) and an Assistant Professor at Concordia University’s Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering department. He holds a B.Sc. in Construction Engineering from the American University in Cairo, and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Manitoba. Prior to joining Concordia, he was a Post-doctoral Fellow at Carleton University, and previously worked for the Provincial Government of Manitoba on their Green Building Policy. He published over thirty peer-reviewed journal and conference papers on topics related to occupant-building interactions, and received multiple prestigious fellowships and awards throughout his career. 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) Multidisciplinary Task Group on Occupant Behavior in Buildings (MTG.OBB), and he currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Canadian chapter of the International Building Performance Simulation Association (IBPSA).
PhD Students
Connor Brackley (co-supervised)
Connor is a PhD Student in Building Engineering at Concordia University's Intelligent Building and Communities Lab (IBCL). His research focuses on mixed methods applications of data analytics and human-centred design to improve thermal comfort and energy performance in buildings. Supervised by Dr. Mohamed Ouf and Dr. Liam O'Brien, his PhD research aims to assist building operators with energy monitoring methods and efficient operational techniques. During his MASc in Mechanical Engineering at Carleton University's Building Performance Research Centre (BPRC), he focused on usability in buildings and improving thermal comfort through thermostat interface design. Connor is also an active contributor to the IEA EBC Annex 79, an International Energy Agency task force focusing on occupant-centric design and operation
Mohamed Osman
Mohamed is a mechanical engineer with experience in thermal energy storage and modelling of renewable energy systems. He obtained an MSc degree in Mechanical Engineering from the American University in Cairo, Egypt in 2020. He joined the GREiA research group in Spain as a visiting researcher in 2019 to work on modelling of latent heat storage units. Mohamed received several academic awards, including the AUC Award for Scholarly Excellence, ASHRAE graduate students grant in aid award, best MSc student paper in ASHRAE annual meeting 2019, and a second-place award in the UNDP innovative green competition-2019
Hamidreza Karimian
Hamidreza is a PhD candidate in Building Engineering at Concordia university, in Montreal, Canada. He obtained his M.Sc. degree from Politecnico di Milano, and BS degree from Shiraz university. He completed his master’s thesis and internships in collaboration with TU/Delft, Aalborg university, Keio university, and university of Saint Joseph. His research had a close tie with the industry and resulted in a project funded by the UN and Italian Ministry of Environment. He is interested in implementing data science in building engineering. His current research involves developing statistical and simulation models to investigate Occupant-Centric building Controls(OCC), focusing on HVAC systems
Kathryn Kaspar (co-supervised)
Kathryn graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering (Civil) from McGill University in 2015. After graduating, she spent a year in Nepal rebuilding sustainable, durable homes following the 2015 Gorkha earthquake. She returned to the U.S. to complete a Master of Science in civil engineering at the University of New Hampshire, while simultaneously working for the City of Cambridge (MA, USA) in net-zero energy planning. Looking forward, Kathryn’s goal is to continue contributing to the field of sustainable, intelligent energy and infrastructure. At Concordia, her research focuses on the effects of occupant behavior on building and city energy use.
Aya Doma
Aya is a PhD student at the Building Engineering department, Concordia university. She has a MASc degree from Concordia university and a bachelor’s degree from Alexandria University, Egypt. During her master, her research focused on applying data analytics tool to investigate the thermal performance of existing buildings as well as developing models to predict buildings’ thermal properties based on their attributes to provide inputs for urban-scale energy simulations. For her current research, she is interested in modelling and analyzing occupant behavior on an urban scale, starting with modelling occupancy in residential buildings.
Zeinab Khorasani Zadeh
Zina is a Ph.D. student in Building Engineering at Concordia University. She has two MASc degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Building Engineering. She joined IBCL in 2020 and started working on developing a simulation-based framework to optimize Occupant-Centric controls (OCC) in buildings, which led to successfully completing her MASc in 2022. Supervised by Prof. Mohamed Ouf and Prof. Burak Gunay, her Ph.D. research will focus on developing OCC strategies to improve demand response in buildings and smart grids.
MASc Students
Emilios Athienitis
Emilios is an MASc candidate at Concordia University. His research focuses on implementing adaptive occupant-centric control (OCC) algorithms that rely on learning occupant preferences. He completed his undergraduate mechanical engineering degree at Concordia University with a specialization in automation. He pursued a career as a hardware engineer at building automation contractors Régulvar and Honeywell. He continued his career as a professional engineer at Ecoystem, a leader in retrofitting HVAC systems with cost-saving and environmentally friendly upgrades in plumbing, ventilation and automation. He is an ASHRAE student member and is also a member of the Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec.
Alumni
Nastaran Alishahi (co-supervised)
Nastaran Alishahi completed a Master’s in Building Engineering at Concordia University in 2021. She holds a BSc in Architectural Engineering and a MEng in Project and Construction Management. Her areas of interest are occupancy, building performance and its integration with BIM. The aim of Nastaran’s current research is occupancy estimation using WiFi data to optimize building operations. As of 2022, she works at Brainbox AI.
Erin Gaucher-Loksts (co-supervised)
Erin Gaucher-Loksts completed her MASc under the supervision of Dr. Andreas Athienitis and Dr. Mohamed Ouf. Her research focused on the integration of heat pumps and building integrated photovoltaics with thermal recovery (BIPV/T) in a passive solar home. Her work included analyzing the energy efficiency as well as the flexibility of systems through simulations. As of 2022, she works as a Researcher at a Government of Canada research facility at CanmetENERGY- Varennes.