Dr. Bianca Howard

Title of talk:
Developing Building Decarbonization Pathways for Diverse Stakeholders

Bio: 
Dr. Bianca Howard is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Columbia University where she’s the Principle Investigator of the Building Energy Research Laboratory. The lab specializes in using building physics, optimization, and artificial intelligence to aid decision-making for Building Decarbonization at individual building and city scales. Current projects focus on developing simulated environments for generating reinforcement learning based operational strategies for building heating ventilation and air conditioning systems, the development of diverse and optimal building decarbonization pathways for portfolios of buildings, and leveraging generative AI for real estate investment decisions.

Dr. Howard received her BS in Mechanical Engineering from University of Nebraska-Lincoln and her Masters and PhD from Department of Mechanical Engineering at Columbia University where she was an US NSF IGERT Fellow. After her PhD, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Imperial College London in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the Urban Systems Laboratory and subsequently a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer at Loughborough University in the Department of Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering. While at Loughborough, she was awarded a prestigious UK EPSRC Innovation Fellowship to examine the "Flexible Timing of Energy Consumption in Communities".