Elnaz Ghasemi Graduate Student, Architectural Engineering, Penn State University
Elnaz Ghasemi is a Ph.D. student who studies how the design of buildings in cities – such as number of floors, building height, and how that relates to the width of the street – affect energy and carbon use, both in the construction phase and when occupied. She is also studying how the arrangement of buildings in a neighborhood context, including factors such as building density, height, and the ratio of built to unbuilt space, can minimize the heat in urban blocks. She uses modeling software to analyze energy use and carbon efficiency, as well as a variety of techniques to gather physical information about buildings from Google map images.