Two members of CBE’s research team have received recognition for their contributions from the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE). The recipients represent our most senior and newer staff: Edward Arens, CBE’s director and professor emeritus of architecture; and Thomas Parkinson, an assistant professional researcher. In addition, we note several active and past members of CBE’s industry consortium who have also received recognition.
Thomas Parkinson is the 2022 recipient of the Ralph G. Nevins Award, and the honor will be celebrated at the ASHRAE Summer Conference. This award recognizes a ‘promising investigator, preferably under 40 years of age,’ for significant accomplishment in the general area of the human response to the environment, and its effect on health, comfort and well-being. Thomas joins a long list of CBE faculty, researchers and alumni who have received this unique award (12 in all since 1989 when Gail Brager was the recipient). Since joining CBE in 2018, Dr. Parkinson has lead and authored numerous studies on thermal comfort and physiology, indoor environmental quality, and the use of sensor technologies. Most recently he co-authored a paper summarizing data from CBE’s occupant survey, and a study on gender and overcooling that paired survey data with Twitter data.
In addition, during ASHRAE’s Winter Conference last month Edward Arens became an ASHRAE Fellow, in recognition of his substantial contributions to improving the built environment through ‘education, research, engineering design and consultation, publications, presentations and mentoring.’ Professor Arens joined UC Berkeley in 1980, he formed the Building Science Group in 1984, and launched CBE in 1997. Under his leadership, CBE has become a widely respected center that bridges the divide between university research and industry practitioners, creating an effective vehicle for putting the results of energy research into practice to substantially affect the enormous impacts buildings have on energy use and global climate change. One unique aspect of Prof. Arens’ work is that research about energy and indoor environmental quality must go hand-in-hand in order to create transformational change in the performance of buildings. You may read more about his perspectives in our interview posted on CBE’s 20-year anniversary.
Also, several current and former CBE partners received recognition at the conference. Among the new ASHRAE Fellows are Tim McGinn, principal with McGinn Technical Services (formerly of DIALOG), and Chun-cheng Piao, president of Daikin Open Innovation Lab Silicon Valley. An ASHRAE Presidential Certificate of Honor was awarded to Luke Leung, director at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.