The Building Sustainable Futures seminar series aims to catalyze solutions-focused conversations around sustainability challenges, with a strong applied sciences flavour. The series is an opportunity to bring leading speakers from Canada, and elsewhere globally, to engage with students, postdocs, faculty, and staff at UBC Vancouver and the University of Victoria.

Dr. Holly Samuelson of Harvard will present research using building performance simulation and other methods to improve energy and environmental performance and human health in buildings and cities. Topics include improving modeling methods for urban context, stormwater, occupant behavior, and occupant views. Other topics include investigations into heat vulnerability at the building and city scale, as well as moisture and mold performance of buildings in future climates.

Dr. Samuelson is an Assistant Professor of Architectural Technology at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and co-head of the Master of Design in Energy and Environment program. Her research and teaching focuses on energy performance, occupant behavior, and health in buildings in a changing climate.

Building Sustainable Futures is a joint effort between Civil Engineering at the University of Victoria, and UBC’s Mechanical Engineering Department, Civil Engineering Department, School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, the Institute for Resources, Environment, & Sustainability, and the UBC Sustainability Initiative.