Please help me congratulate the newest PhD, Dr. Manal Anis!
Manal successfully defended her doctoral dissertation, titled “Developing a surrogate-based methodology for rapid daylight and outdoor view prediction for adaptive shading system,” delivering an outstanding presentation of her research. It has been a true honor to advise her throughout this journey.
A heartfelt thank you to her dissertation committee— Professor Kathryn Anthony, Professor Nishant Garg, and Professor Niloufar Emami —for their rigorous review and thoughtful guidance that elevated this work.
Huge congratulations to Dr. You-Jeong Kim for successfully defending her PhD dissertation!
Watching her journey and seeing her hard work culminate in such an impactful defense has been incredibly rewarding. She has a bright future ahead in the field, and I couldn’t be prouder as an advisor.
I would also like to extend my sincere gratitude to our esteemed committee members—Professor Rick Strand, Professor Bill Braham, and Professor Hadi Meidani—for their invaluable insights, time, and dedication to guiding this research.
Dr. Yun Kyu Yi has been appointed as a Design Editor for the Journal of TAD (Technology, Architecture + Design), published by ACSA and Taylor & Francis. He will work closely with the Executive Editor of the journal, specifically overseeing the section titled “Detail+.
Patricia Kio, Yun Kyu Yi, Timothy Adekunle, “The Role of Smart Thermostats in Sustainable Home Automation: Insights from a Systematic Literature Review” in International Conference of Green+Digital+Intelligent Built Environments (GDI2025), December 1-3, 2025, Auckland, New Zealand
You-Jeong Kim, Seoyoung Yoon, Yun Kyu Yi, “Inverse Physics-Informed Neural Networks for Thermal Parameter Estimation of Existing Buildings” in 19th International IBPSA conference and exhibition, August 24–27, 2025, Brisbane, Australia.
Manal Anis, Hamza Samouh, Nishant Garg, Yun Kyu Yi. “Understanding the visco-thermo-mechanical behavior of nitinol for climate-adaptive window shading devices”, Journal of Building Engineering, Volume 112, 2025.
RAL is collaborating with KICT (Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology, Korea) through a multi-year contract to advance the green rating system in Korea.
Collaboration with the Daikin Open Innovation Lab (Silicon Valley), RAL (Responsive Architecture Lab @ UIUC), CEBD (Center for Environmental Building + Design @ UPenn), and HERB Lab (@ Worcester Polytechnic Institute) continues, focusing on residential building performance using data.
