Tenure-Track Assistant Professor of Architectural Engineering and Director of HERB-Lab at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI)
BIO
Nan (Nancy) Ma, PhD, Assoc. AIA, is an Assistant Professor of Architectural Engineering at WPI and director of Laboratory for Healthy, Environmental, and Resilient Buildings (HERB-Lab). Her work investigates the integration of architectural and computational knowledge to advance healthy, sustainable, and occupant-centric buildings. Specifically, her research interests include human dimensions of building decarbonization, building performance simulation and modeling, IoT smart buildings and machine learning, and related indoor environmental (air) quality field studies. Ma has led multiple interdisciplinary research projects in collaboration with various fields ranging from public health, biostatistics, computer science, mechanical engineering, to pediatric psychology. She has been awarded 2021 Best Paper Awards from the highly regarded journal Building and Environment and has received research funds from Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, GAPSA - Provost Fellowship for Interdisciplinary Innovation, and Penn Research Transition Fund. Ma holds a PhD in Architecture (building technology track) from the University of Pennsylvania, a Master of Architecture, and a Bachelor of Environments from the University of Melbourne, Australia.
Ma, Nan, Qi Zhang, Fabricio Murai, William W. Braham, and Holly W. Samuelson. "Learning building occupants’ indoor environmental quality complaints and dissatisfaction from text-mining Booking. com reviews in the United States." Building and Environment 237 (2023): 110319. (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2023.110319
Ma, Nan, Alex Waegel, Max Hakkarainen, William W. Braham, Lior Glass, and Dorit Aviv. "Blockchain+ IoT sensor network to measure, evaluate and incentivize personal environmental accounting and efficient energy use in indoor spaces." Applied Energy 332 (2023): 120443. (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2022.120443
Ma, Nan, Max Hakkarainen, Miaomiao Hou, Dorit Aviv, and William W. Braham. "Impacts of building envelope design on indoor ozone exposures and health risks in urban environments." Indoor and Built Environment 31, no. 10 (2022): https://doi.org/10.1177/1420326X221112010
Ma, Nan, Liang Chen, Jian Hu, Paris Perdikaris, and William W. Braham. "Adaptive behavior and different thermal experiences of real people: A Bayesian neural network approach to thermal preference prediction and classification." Building and Environment 198 (2021): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2021.107875