Melissa Pappas
Shu Yang, Joseph Bordogna Professor in Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (CBE), works to identify how synthetic and biological materials can be engineered to solve diverse climate change problems. One of her research goals is developing efficient heating and cooling technologies for buildings, which finds her and her team collaborating with experts in architecture.
“Humans spend 22 hours a day inside a building,” says Yang, who also serves as Chair of MSE. “When indoors, we use artificial light, power outlets and AC or heat. As engineers, we want to find ways to make buildings more efficient and better aligned with nature to have a smaller carbon footprint.”
While Yang has successfully connected engineering and architecture in many projects, such as in her collaborative work with the Weitzman School of Design on 3D-printed carbon-absorbing porous concrete floor slabs that reduce waste while maintaining the building’s efficient thermal performance through the use of natural ventilation, she realizes there are many challenges with cross-disciplinary work.
“We need to work with architects to make sure what we produce as engineers is climate-care minded and sustainability-minded, and be able to talk to designers in common languages,” she says. “But this collaboration takes practice to navigate well. We have to first bridge the knowledge of engineers who typically work on a nano- or micro-scale to the knowledge of architects who work on meter scales before we can jump into the actual work.”
To bridge that gap, Yang, together with Paulo Arratia, Professor and Eduardo D. Glandt Distinguished Scholar in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (MEAM), LeAnn Dourte, Practice Associate Professor in Bioengineering, Dorit Aviv, Assistant Professor of Architecture, and William Braham, Andrew Gordon Professor of Architecture, has initiated a multidisciplinary training program called CLIMATE-CARE: Climate Action and Resilience for Extreme Urban Heat. The program, which joins collaborators from Penn Engineering and Penn’s Weitzman School of Design, is funded by a $3 million NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) Award. With this support, CLIMATE-CARE will host a total of 56 students from both schools over the course of the next five years.
“We expect to attract students at all levels to work on and learn from timely problems at the interface of engineering, climate and design in the first formal collaborative graduate program across engineering and architecture at Penn,” says Arratia.
“While architects and engineers follow different formal curricula, they need to work together on the built environment throughout their careers,” adds Braham. “Learning each other’s languages and conventions while in school can only help in the collective effort to address the climate emergency.”
Students participating in CLIMATE-CARE will pursue research across engineering, architecture and design. They will attend seminars and take a number of different courses that touch on both disciplines. Students will be mentored by different faculty members across Penn Engineering and Weitzman and will have access to the program’s independent advisory board composed of experts in industry, national labs, nonprofits and architecture firms, giving them opportunities to attend field trips, learn from guest speakers and pursue a variety of internships.
Doctoral students are invited to submit their interest in the program now with an official commencement of the program in early 2025. While the program mainly supports Ph.D. students specifically, undergraduate and master’s students interested in this program should get in touch for collaboration and internship opportunities.
“The building sector is responsible for a significant portion of energy-related global greenhouse gas emissions, and if we want to see a significant change in the near future, a tight collaboration between architects and engineers is necessary,” says Aviv. “The students trained through this grant can become the leaders of the necessary transition to carbon neutral or even carbon negative buildings in the coming decades.”
Learn more about CLIMATE-CARE here.