FACULTY
Anna Dyson
Associate Professor
Anna Dyson teaches design, technology, and theory at the School of Architecture at Rensselaer. She is the director of The Center for Architecture, Science and Ecology (CASE) which hosts the Graduate Program in Architectural Sciences, concentration is Built Ecologies. She has worked as a design architect and product designer in several offices in Canada, Europe, and the United States. Her work has been exhibited in the MoMA Young Architects Series, and was a finalist in the international Next Generation Design Competition.
Dyson holds multiple international patents for building systems inventions and is currently directing interdisciplinary research sponsored to develop new systems for on-site energy generation.
Dyson received a Baccalauréat Général from Université Laval and a Master of Architecture from Yale University.
Jason Oliver Vollen, RA
Jason Oliver Vollen is a Registered Architect and researcher focused on emerging material technologies, specifically, the integration of energy per-formative structural ceramics, dynamic and environmental simulation, and digital fabrication. Prior to joining RPI, Vollen was an Assistant Professor at the University of Arizona working in the Emerging Material Technologies Research Group focusing on next generation design strategies based on the integration of emerging technical systems. Vollen is a principal with Binary design, a collaborative practice focusing on energy effective architecture and emerging material processes. He has worked with Matter Architecture Practice in New York and as a project manager, designer, and fabricator with the Cranbrook Architecture Office. Vollen received his Bachelors (B.Arch) from The Cooper Union Institute for the Advancement of Science and Art and his Masters (M.Arch II) from Cranbrook Academy of Art.
Mark Mistur
Mark Mistur received his Master's of Science in Building Conservation and his Bachelor's of Architecture from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He also studied at the ETH in Zurich before beginning a career combining both teaching and architectural practice. He was Project Designer and Architect on large and small-scale projects before beginning a practice based in Troy, New York. In teaching and research, he focuses on performance-based design and the integration of building systems and technologies and has helped develop a curriculum based on the inclusion of theoretical, design, and technical skills as necessarily integral in the execution of architectural work.
Between 1998 and 2005, he served as Associate Dean in the School of Architecture where he was instrumental in developing new Masters and PhD programs. He currently leads the Bedford Initiatives, a joint project between engineering and architecture, which seeks to leverage the intelligence and creativity of the two disciplines through a joint studio experience.
Ted Ngai
Ted Ngai is Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and has been teaching Core and Advanced Design Studio since 2005. He also teaches advanced architectural geometry and computation, parametric modeling and analysis, minimal surface design and fabrication, and environmental robotic systems.
Ngai is a founding principle of Atelier nGai, an experimental design and research firm based in New York City, specializing in design, computation, mathematics and fabrication. Prior to forming Atelier nGai, he was a founding partner of UNI Architecture, a practice that transfuses real estate development, design, contracting, and construction into a single process. Their work has been featured by major architecture and design publications in Europe, North America and South Korea, such as Dwell, Wallpaper, Architectural Review and Rizzoli. Their work has also received an housing award from Boston Society of Architects in 2006.
Ngai received his B. Arch from Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and his M. Arch from Harvard University.
tedngai.net >
Michael K. Jensen, PhD
Michael Jensen's research interests have been directed toward convective single and two-phase heat transfer and the associated fluid flow with the emphasis on these processes in heat exchangers. This research has been experimentally based, but numerical analysis using sophisticated computational fluid dynamics codes that can handle many general situations has been and is being used to complement the experimental work and to suggest additional avenues for investigation. Recent research has involved boiling and two-phase flow in microchannels (as applied to electronic cooling), transport processes in proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells, development of a building integrated photovoltaic system, and the development of a thermal management approach for distributed, large-scale, high-power electronic systems.
Jensen received his BS from University of Missouri-Columbia, and his MS and PhD from Iowa State University.
Lupita Montoya, PhD
Lupita Montoya's main area of research is the study of indoor air quality and the health effects of aerosols (a.k.a. particulate matter). She is especially interested in elucidating the role that various aerosols play in the development of disease or toxicity as well as developing methods for their measurement and control. In the case of allergenic aerosols, the focus is on the link to allergies and asthma. One major thrust of Montoya's research is developing new mechanistic models for the study of these diseases. In this general area, Montoya is also trying to elucidate the connection between the physico-chemical characteristics of various nanoparticles (including carbon nanotubes) and possible effects in humans and environmental systems. Here, the focus is on the thorough physico-chemical characterization of the nanoparticles, including the development of new methods for evaluating surface energy of these particles, (since there are no standard methods available at this time). This work is presently being funded by the NSF Nanotech Center at Rensselaer and in collaboration with researchers in the Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science Departments at Rensselaer.
Montoya received her BS from California State University at Northridge, and her MS and PhD from Stanford University.
Pravin Bhiwapurkar, PhD
Pravin Bhiwapurkar received his Masters in Building Engineering and Management from the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi (India), and his Ph.D. in Architecture from the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. His doctoral research focuses on integration of urban design, urban climate and building energy. He is currently a Clinical Assistant Professor with the Built Ecologies Program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). Pravin’s teaching and research interests concentrate on climate responsive built environment, high performance buildings, net-zero energy buildings, day lighting in buildings, passive energy savings strategies and appropriate technologies in buildings. Extending these interests, his work experience with the Energy Center of Wisconsin also includes integration of renewable energy sources in building design, whole building energy modeling, and life cycle costing for various building types.
Pravin was awarded an honorary mention at the 6th International Association of Urban Climate (IAUC) conference, Sweden for his doctoral research poster. He has co-authored an article on energy and environment based architectural research and design. This paper adopts an innovative approach to the education of an architect through a multi-disciplinary design studio. Pravin’s other co-authored article on real time energy savings in buildings in American Council for Energy Efficiency and Economy (ACEEE) emphasizes the relevance of timely inputs and maximizing energy savings at a given design stage.
Jefferson Ellinger
Jefferson Ellinger received his Masters of Architecture from Columbia University after completing his B.S. in Arch and B.S. in Material Science. From the Ohio State University.
As an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute he specializes in computational design techniques. Specifically, the research/teaching he undertakes is focused on developing and designing parametric relations to promote novelty in design.
He is a founding partner of E/Ye Design. His firm has built several projects throughout North America and they have won several international competitions, most recently a multi-use facility in Kazakhstan. Their work has been recognized by being featured in several publications and exhibited at MoMA in New York City.
As both an educator and practitioner his directive is to promote design as a project produced around a technique driven system which can incorporate change. Multidisciplinary concerns are implemented as useful and necessary reorganizers of material and form producing a truly novel and ecologically efficient end product. The term ecology is used specifically because it refers to more than simply a sustainable or formal construct but rather to an interconnected performance driven design. That is to say, the development of a design project is directed to incorporate multiple scales of performance evaluated systems while simultaneously incorporating a design driven logic. In this way, both performance and design reverberations would influence and communicate with one another in an ecological way.
www.eye-des.com >
Jonas Braasch, PhD
Jonas Braasch was born in 1971 in Wipperfürth, Germany. From 1992 until 1998, he studied Physics at the University of Dortmund where he received a diploma degree. Afterwards, he obtained a three-year doctoral scholarship within the graduate school "KOGNET" (cognition, neuronal networks) at the Ruhr-University Bochum. In 2001, he received a Doctor-of-Engineering degree for his thesis: "Auditory Localization and Detection in Multiple-Sound-Source Scenarios", in which he investigated the human ability to localize sound sources in a multi-source environment. He also investigated the precedence effect and simulating human hearing in reverberant conditions. Jonas Braasch second field of research is related to musical acoustics (History and Technology of Musical Instruments). He has conducted a number of investigations on the free-reed stops of concert-hall and church organs. In 2004, he completed his Ph.D. thesis in this field at the Institute of Musicology of the Ruhr-University Bochum. Through the years 2004-2005, Jonas Braasch worked in the Sound Recording Area of the Faculty of Music at McGill University as Research Associate/Assistant Professor. In Jan. 2006, Dr. Braasch started as Assistant Professor in the Program in Architectural Acoustics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
John Gowdy, PhD
Economics
John M. Gowdy has been with the Economics Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute since 1982. He holds a B.A. in Anthropology from American University, a Master's degree in Community Planning from the University of Rhode Island, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from West Virginia University. He has been a West Virginia University Foundation Fellow and a Fulbright Scholar at the Wirtschaftsuniversität in Vienna. He has been a visiting scholar at the Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung in Munich, the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, The Central European University in Budapest, The Vrije University in Amsterdam, and Tokushima University in Japan.
His professional interests include the application of input-output analysis to productivity, energy, and regional economics, evolutionary theory in economics, economic anthropology, and ecological economics. He has authored or edited eight books and published over 80 academic articles. His latest book, co-authored with Carl McDaniel, titled "Paradise for Sale: Markets, Myths, and Ecosystem Destruction", will be published next year by the University of California Press. He is currently working on the topics of trade and limitational factors of production, evolutionary theory and environmental policy, and markets and biodiveristy loss in ocean fisheries.
He is a member of the editorial boards of the journals Ecological Economics, Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Environmental Ethics, Government and Policy: Environment and Planning C, International Journal of Agricultural Resources, Governance and Ecology and the International Journal of Global Environmental Issues. He was recently (1997) a guest editor of a special issue of Structural Change and Economic Dynamics on the topic of biology and economics.
Achille Messac, PhD
Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering
Achille Messac's current primary research interest is in the area of Multidisciplinary Design Optimization and in the development of the physical programming method in particular.
His research is intended to make the application of optimization in industry settings more effective, practical and pervasive. Closely intertwined with this objective is the exploration and development of modeling methods for structural, control, and dynamical systems -- primarily for the purpose of optimal design. Emphasizing the multidisciplinary aspect of design is an important focus, including economic considerations.
PROFESSIONAL RESEARCH
Carl Galioto
Carl Galioto is the partner-in-charge of SOM/New York's Technical Group and is responsible for building science design—an area that includes digital design, quality assurance, cost control, code compliance, exterior wall development, material research, and the integration of building services and structural systems in the early design phases of projects, in addition to construction documents and construction administration.
Mr. Galioto chairs the SOM Technical Managing Committee and has been responsible since 1998 for the creation and implementation of firmwide standards for documentation, specifications, General Conditions, and procedures for construction administration services.
Another of Mr. Galioto’s areas of expertise is the implementation of security and special life safety designs for complex buildings. He is a member of the New York City Model Code Program Managing Committee that is advising the Mayor and Buildings Commissioner on the creation of a new building code for New York City, and a member of the New York City Fire Department Advisory Committee. Mr. Galioto is also a member of a special task force convened by the National Institute of Building Sciences to draft recommendations for high rise codes of the future.
Julie Hiromoto
Julie Hiromoto's professional experience focuses on exterior envelopes, sustainable design and project management. As part of SOM’s Building Enclosure Group she designed, developed and oversaw implementation of custom curtain wall and storefront systems. She also led sustainable design initiatives on several projects, including World Trade Center Tower One and 250 West 55th Street, a forty-story Core and Shell office building in NYC. Her responsibilities included the integrated design, coordination, and realization of sustainable design principles in architecture.
Now working as a Project Manager, her role at CASE focuses on bridging the very different worlds of professional and academic practice. Julie received her Masters of Architecture from Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation and a Bachelors Degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology's College of Architecture. She is a LEED Accredited Professional and teaches a course entitled Managing the Sustainable Design Process at New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies.
Varun Kohli
Varun Kohli has been intricately involved with SOM's environmental design and analysis team and has played a key role in integrating environmental analysis to the overall design process. In his role at SOM he has worked with design teams to provide performance and environmental studies that inform the design solution. His role also includes coordination efforts with consultants and material research. Varun has worked on numerous projects with SOM ranging in scale from large master plans to individual buildings. He led the sustainable design efforts for the Hill County Office complex in Hyderabad (India) which was awarded the Asia-Pacific Regional Bronze Prize for sustainable construction by Holcim Foundation in 2008. Varun is currently leading sustainability efforts for the New School University Center in collaboration with CASE.
Varun holds a M.Sc. degree in Sustainable Environmental Design (with commendation) from the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London and a B.Arch from City College of New York. He has presented papers at international conferences including Passive & Low Energy Architecture Conference (PLEA) and Passive and Low Energy Cooling Conference (PALENC). He has been a guest lecturer and as well as jury and roundtable participant at University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University.
Marzia Sedino
Marzia Sedino is an Environmental Engineer for both CASE and the Advanced Design Group at SOM-NY.
At SOM-NY, Marzia collaborates with CASE in the research, study and evaluation of experimental and advanced environmental technologies by focusing on their integration-interaction in the building design. Her research focuses on the assessment of the sustainability of buildings and system details in order to inform design decisions through a process driven by environmental analysis as well as to evaluate the environmental and comfort performance of the project. Her work consists of assessing building performance through the use of dynamic simulation software to perform energy and comfort analysis (daylighting and glare, envelope thermal performance, natural airflow simulation, RES integration, etc.) and the study of a building's impact within its urban context. She works closely with project teams through various phases of the project.
Marzia has a degree in Environmental Engineering from the University of Pavia (Italy, 2006). Before joining CASE and SOM-NY, she was a researcher in Italy for ITC-CNR (Construction Technology Institute of the National Research Council) where she worked on the development of the Italian rating system for buildings sustainability assessment (Protocollo ITACA) and on the optimization of energy models and building simulations. Marzia’s work at ITC-CNR involved a one-month research period at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, where she studied the optimum energy model for dynamic double skin facades.
EmilyRae Brayton
EmilyRae Brayton works at CASE to facilitate the collaboration between graduate research teams and professional practice teams. As a CASE professional, she works with research teams to develop strategies for integrating graduate research trajectories with existing and potential project test-beds.
EmilyRae received her Master of Science in Architectural Sciences from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Graduate School of Architecture. Her Graduate work focused on improving the quality of urban spaces through the integration of vegetation in building systems. She received her Bachelors of Architecture from Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Architecture.
PhD CANDIDATES
Ahu Aydogan
Building-Integrated Active Phyto-Remediation Systems
Kristin Malone
Building-Integrated Solar Absorption for Water Reuse and Thermal Control For Hot and Arid Climates
Bess Krietemeyer
Environmental Control and Information Exchange through the Integration of Electroactive Polymers to Dynamic Building Envelopes
Skye Elliott Gruen
Concentrating Solar-driven on-site energy production and distributed power systems
Keith Van de Riet
Systemic Structural Intervention for Regenerative Urban Development along Tropical Coastlines
Kelly Winn
Advanced Ceramic Composite Systems
Ajith Rao
Building-Integrated Wind Generation
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