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Senior Research Fellow · Registered Professional Engineer, State of California

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research interests

Artificial intelligence for buildings · data-driven modeling and controls · robotics for building management · IoT and smart buildings · indoor environmental quality

education

research experience

  • Jun 2025 – present
    Senior Research Fellow
    IDEAS Lab, National University of Singapore

    Mentor: Prof. Adrian Chong

    • Authored major portions of successful proposals securing over S$3.2M from NUS, A*STAR and GBIC.
    • Led comparative evaluation of LLM, RL and rule-based building controls on BOPTEST.
    • Led interdisciplinary projects with overseas institutions and industry partners, and supervised Ph.D. students.
    • Designed LoRaWAN ecosystems for occupancy counting, occupant-centric control and mixed-mode cooling across offices, schools and hospitals.
    • Deployed rule-based mixed-mode ventilation control on a live Honeywell system via the NETx API, cutting energy use by 48%.
  • Jul 2024 – Jun 2025
    Research Fellow
    IDEAS Lab, National University of Singapore

    Mentor: Prof. Adrian Chong

    Promoted to Senior Research Fellow after eleven months in recognition of exceptional performance, where the standard path to this promotion takes three years.

  • Aug 2019 – Jun 2024
    Research Assistant
    Carnegie Mellon University

    Advisors: Prof. Erica Cochran Hameen and Prof. Vivian Loftness

    • Mobile sensing robot for indoor environmental quality assessment.
    • Spatiotemporal Gaussian process modeling of indoor environmental quality.
    • Thermal comfort mapping with visual SLAM and semantic segmentation.
    • Social robots for post-occupancy evaluation.
    • Iterative learning control for building thermodynamics.
  • May 2023 – Aug 2023
    Ph.D. Researcher
    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

    Berkeley, CA, USA · Advisor: Dr. Tianzhen Hong

    • Physics-informed neural network modeling of building thermodynamics.
    • Model predictive control to optimise building energy flexibility.
  • Oct 2022 – May 2023
    Ph.D. Researcher
    Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

    Richland, WA, USA · Advisor: Dr. Michael Brambley

    • Gradient-boosting framework for long-term energy prediction of packaged air conditioning units with limited information.
  • Aug 2012 – Jun 2015
    Research Assistant
    University of California, Merced

    Advisor: Prof. Jian-Qiao Sun

    • ARMAX modeling of building dynamics and MPC optimal control for air handling units.

industry experience

  • Aug 2015 – Jul 2019
    Mechanical Engineer, P.E.
    Gayner Engineers

    San Francisco, CA, USA

    • HVAC and building automation system design for critical healthcare, life science, library and higher education buildings.
    • Energy simulation and sustainability coordination for LEED, ENERGY STAR, Title 24 and ASHRAE 90.1.
    • Commissioning and energy auditing of MEP and medical equipment systems.
    • Project management, construction administration and drawing production — see projects.

teaching

  • Jan 2022 – May 2024
    Instructor — 48-722, Building Performance Modeling
    Carnegie Mellon University

    Sole instructor of a graduate class, 15–30 students per offering

  • Fall 2020 – Fall 2021
    Teaching Assistant
    Carnegie Mellon University

    48-768 Indoor Environmental Quality · 48-729 Sustainability, Health and Productivity · 48-722 Building Performance Modeling · 48-721 Building Controls and Diagnostics · 48-116 Building Physics

  • 2013 – 2014
    Lab Instructor and Teaching Assistant
    University of California, Merced

    ME 021 Engineering Computing · ME 140 Vibration and Control · ME 142 Mechatronics · ENGR 065 Circuit Theory

research funding

  • Oct 2025 – present
    Mixed-Mode Ventilation in Schools: Impact on Learning, Comfort and Energy
    Researcher

    NRF Cities of Tomorrow R&D Programme · S$1,510,000

  • Oct 2025 – present
    Cost-Effective Wireless Occupant-Centric Controls for Energy-Efficient Whole Building Retrofit
    Lead Researcher

    BCA Green Buildings Innovation Cluster · S$1,256,000

  • Oct 2025 – present
    Thermoelectric Cooling with Novel Material Composites for Localised Cooling
    Researcher

    BCA Green Buildings Innovation Cluster · S$1,648,000

  • Apr 2025 – present
    AI-Driven Climate Resilient Cooling: Robust Reinforcement Learning for Mixed-Mode Ventilation
    Lead Researcher

    JST–A*STAR Joint Grant for AI · S$345,000

  • Nov 2024 – Nov 2025
    Towards Sustainable Cooling: Occupant-Centric Mixed-Mode Ventilation Control
    Lead Researcher

    Korea University – NUS Strategic Partner Funds · S$20,000

  • Oct 2020 – May 2024
    An Automatic Mobile Sensing Platform for Indoor Environmental Quality Assessments
    Principal Investigator

    Fund for Research & Creativity / Scholarly Project Funding, CMU · $10,500

honors and awards

  • 2026
    Best Oral Presentation Award
    International Conference on Building and Simulation (BAS 2026), Hong Kong
  • 2020 – 2023
    Scholarly Project Funding × 4
    Graduate Student Assembly, Carnegie Mellon University
  • 2020 – 2021
    Letter of Commendation × 2
    School of Architecture, Carnegie Mellon University
  • 2014
    Mechanical Engineering Bobcat Award
    University of California, Merced
  • 2013
    Graduate Summer Fellowship
    University of California, Merced
  • 2010
    People's Scholarship
    Nanjing University

service

certifications and memberships

  • 2017 – present
    Registered Professional Mechanical Engineer (M38549)
    Board for Professional Engineers, Land Surveyors, and Geologists, California
  • 2016 – present
    Full Member
    American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE)
  • Dec 2024 – present
    Individual Member
    International Building Performance Simulation Association (IBPSA)
  • 2017 – 2021
    LEED AP BD+C
    Green Business Certification Inc.
  • 2018
    Deep Learning Specialization
    Coursera