Final Report: International Workshop on Connecting Woman ...€¦ · opportunities to meet with...

WISB Final Report (NSF Award 1814621)

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Final Report: International Workshop on Connecting Woman Faculty in Sustainable Building Research (WISB)

Chair: Jin Wen

Steering Committee: Burcin Becerik-Gerber, Simi Hoque, Zheng O’Neill, Ming Qu, Lin Duanmu, Qing Chang

Website: wisb.site

May 2019


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Acknowledgement

This project is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Award 1814621. Strong support from NSF program director Bruce K. Hamilton throughout this grant is greatly appreciated. Special thanks are given to Professor Lin Duanmu, Dr. Xin Jia, and many volunteers from Dalian University of Technology for their hospitality and wonderful organization. We are very thankful for our keynote speakers, Dean Addington and Dean Zhu, and program officers, Dr. Marina Sofos (U.S. Department of Energy), Dr. Cynthia Chen (NSF), and Dr. Jennifer Gerbi (ARPA-E) who have shared their insights and visions in the sustainable building research areas. We would like to thank Dr. E. A Krietemeyer, Dr. Chetna Chianese, Tamara L. Rosanio, and Loral Wilson from Syracuse University for helping organizing the second workshop. The endorsement from the 2018 International Building Physics Conference is appreciated. Support from NSF program officer Dr. Grace Hsuan is acknowledged. At last but not the least, special thanks are given to Barbara Interlandi for her hard work throughout this project.


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Abstract Sustainable Building research, which focuses on improving indoor environmental quality, reducing building energy consumption and overall life cycle cost, as well as promoting a better human-building relationship, has grown significantly in the past decade. This is an area of research that requires collaboration among many disciplines including engineering, computer science, social sciences and architecture. However, due to the STEM gender gap, woman faculty may be isolated and find it difficult to identify, network, and collaborate with other researchers from different disciplines. Two workshops, i.e., the 1st international Woman Faculty in Sustainable Building Research (WISB) workshop, at Dalian China on July 5th-6th , 2018, and 2nd WISB workshop @IBPC, at Syracuse, NY, on September 23rd, 2018, have been successfully organized. Forty seven American female researchers have been sponsored by this grant to participate in the two workshops. Among these researchers, five are full professor or senior researchers, twelve are associate professors, fifteen are assistant professors or junior researchers, and fifteen are PHD student and Post-Doc researchers. Another twenty two female researchers from China and Europe also have participated in the workshop in Dalian China (not sponsored by this grant). These two workshops aim to engage woman faculty worldwide in sustainable building research 1) to provide a networking opportunity that will promote future international and multidisciplinary research collaborations; 2) to identify the challenges and gaps that affect woman faculty’s success in this area and to seek potential solutions, and 3) to explore future research directions.


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TABLE OF CONTENT

ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................... III

1. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 WHY SUSTAINABLE BUILDINGS? ........................................................................................................ 1 1.2 WHY WOMAN IN SUSTAINABLE BUILDINGS? ...................................................................................... 1 1.3 WHY INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP? ................................................................................................... 2 2. OBJECTIVES......................................................................................................................... 2 3. ACTIVITIES AND AGENDA .................................................................................................... 3 4. PARTICIPANT RECRUITMENT AND SUMMARY...................................................................... 5 5. SUMMARY OF DISCUSSIONS ON SUSTAINABLE BUILDING TOPICAL AREAS AND CAREER PANELS ....................................................................................................................................... 6 5.1 TOPICAL AREA 1 HUMAN BUILDING INTERACTIONS (HBIS) AND THEIR IMPACT ON BUILDING SUSTAINABILITY ...................................................................................................................................... 6 5.2 TOPICAL AREA 2: BIG DATA ENABLED INTELLIGENT OPERATION FOR SUSTAINABLE BUILDINGS ....... 8 5.3 TOPICAL AREA 3 SUSTAINABLE ENVELOPE, MATERIALS, AND BUILDING DESIGN FOR SUSTAINABLE BUILDINGS ............................................................................................................................................ 10 5.4 TOPICAL AREA 4: SUSTAINABLE BUILDINGS FOR URBAN SUSTAINABILITY....................................... 12 5.5 CAREER PANEL DISCUSSIONS ........................................................................................................... 15 6. COLLABORATION .............................................................................................................. 16 7. WORKSHOP OUTPUTS AND EVALUATION .......................................................................... 16 8. INTELLECTUAL MERIT ...................................................................................................... 17 9. BROADER IMPACTS ............................................................................................................ 17 10. WORKSHOP STEERING COMMITTEE................................................................................ 17 APPENDIX A ATTENDEE LIST ................................................................................................... 19 A.1 ATTENDEE LIST FOR DALIAN WISB WORKSHOP .............................................................................. 19 A.1 ATTENDEE LIST FOR DALIAN WISB WORKSHOP (CONT.) ................................................................. 20 APPENDIX B POST-WORKSHOP SURVEY (2018) ........................................................................ 22 APPENDIX C CAREER PANEL QUESTIONS ................................................................................ 27


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1. Introduction Due to the interdisciplinary nature of sustainable building research, researchers may find it difficult to identify, network, and collaborate with other researchers from different disciplines. For example, engineering researchers often do not have networking opportunities that overlap with architectural researchers, or researchers from other relevant areas, such as information science and social science. This situation is even worse for woman faculty focusing on sustainable buildings, who frequently experience isolation due to the unique interdisciplinary nature of their field, which is exacerbated by the STEM gender gap. This lack of effective multi-disciplinary networking opportunities among researchers significantly restricts the growth of sustainable building innovations, delays the career mobility of woman faculty, and can steer away promising women researchers from this area. We hence successfully organized two multi-disciplinary workshops in the sustainable building areas. The first workshop, “International Woman Faculty in Sustainable Building Research (WISB) workshop” was held at Dalian China on July 5th-6th, 2018, that aimed to engage woman faculty worldwide in sustainable building research areas. The second workshop, “WISB@IBPC”, was held as part of the 2018 International Building Physics Conference (IBPC) in Syracuse, NY on September 23rd 2018. The second workshop focused on early-stage woman researchers including senior PhD students, Post-Doc researchers, and Assistant Professors. 1.1 Why Sustainable Buildings? Buildings play a significant role in modern society. The building sector consumes more primary energy than any other sector. Moreover, the indoor environment of buildings is where the majority of the population spends more than 90% of their time. The indoor environment strongly affects our productivity, health, and wellness. Buildings are also a major component of urban infrastructure and are essential for smart city and smart grid development. The research areas of Sustainable Building, which focus on improving indoor environmental quality, reducing building energy consumption and overall life cycle cost, and promoting a better human-building relationship, have grown significantly in the past decade. However, most of the existing research has centered on specific topical areas, such as occupant behavior modeling or advanced building controls, etc. It is time for a systematic analysis and forward-thinking discussion on the needs, gaps, and future of sustainable building research. More specifically, we have chosen four topical areas to focus on that range from building envelope, operation, to human-building integration and urban scale sustainability. The needs and gaps of each topical area are presented in Section 5. 1.2 Why Woman in Sustainable Buildings? Promoting woman faculty in sustainable buildings will not only stimulate growth and innovation in this area but also attract more women to enter engineering and architecture. The inclusion of women has the potential to positively shift current sustainability and energy practices to better meet the needs of the poor, minority groups, and other under-represented populations (Cecelski, 2000).


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Yet, women represent less than 14% workforce in Engineering (NSF, 2017, Walker, 2017). This is even worse in Construction, Mechanical, Energy, and other traditionally male-dominated fields. It is well recognized that the lack of woman in energy and engineering is due to the limited representation of woman faculty in these academic units (Walker, 2017, Crawford, 2012). Studies have clearly demonstrated that successful woman faculty in traditionally male-dominated departments serve as role models and encourage female students to pursue these fields (Brown, et al., 2013, Harrison, 2010). Sustainability topics have been shown to attract women students to engineering fields (Harrison, 2010). Hence woman faculty, especially woman faculty in sustainability research areas, have a critical role in promoting innovation, serving as mentors and role models (to attract female students), and encouraging women students in the field. Moreover, encouraging woman faculty to pursue leadership roles is also critical to attract more women to enter the engineering and academic fields. Existing literature has suggested that external networking opportunities are critical for faculty career growth (Niehaus and O’Meara, 2014). However, external networking has been traditionally difficult for woman faculty to pursue due to structural or social limitations such as family responsibilities and the STEM gender gap. As discussed earlier, the multi-disciplinary nature of smart building research makes it challenging for woman faculty in sustainable building research to network. There is a strong need to provide a multi-disciplinary networking avenue beyond the traditional conferences, designed exclusively for woman faculty from different ranks and different disciplines to gather and network, and to facilitate collaborative and mentoring opportunities. 1.3 Why International Workshop? Many countries, such as European Union members, China, Japan, and Singapore etc., deem sustainable building research as a priority research area and have investigated amply in its innovations in the past decade. As a result, many of the above-mentioned countries have established advanced sustainable building research centers, constructed first-class laboratory facilities, and made great progresses/innovations in sustainable building research. Engaging international participation in this proposed workshop will not only introduce viewpoints from many different cultures, but also increase the opportunities for the U.S. participants to develop potential international collaborations.

2. Objectives This project aims at engaging woman faculty and researchers worldwide who are engaged in sustainable building research:

• to provide networking opportunities that will promote future international and multidisciplinary research collaborations,

• to identify the challenges and gaps that affect woman faculty’s success in this area and to seek potential solutions,

• to identify future directions in sustainable building research, and to • provide career training opportunities for early-stage woman researchers.


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3. Activities and Agenda

Assorted activities have been designed in the two workshops to promote networking and career training. Activities (summarized in Table 1) in the Dalian WISB workshop have included sustainable building topical area panel discussions, WISB career panel discussions, and social activities. Detailed summary of these activities are provided in later sections.

Table 1 Agenda of Dalian WISB Workshop (July 5th to 6th, 2018)

Day 1

Day 2

7:30-8:30 Breakfast (in hotel) 7:30-8:30 Breakfast (in hotel) 8:30-9:00 Opening Remarks 8:30-9:15 Keynote Speech by Prof

Zhu 9:00-10:00 Keynote Speech by Prof

Addington 9:15-10:30 WISB Career Panel 2

(Lead by Chang) 10:00-10:30 Coffee Break 10:30-11:00 Coffee Break 10:30-12:30 Topical Area 1

(Lead by Becerik-Gerber) 11:00-1:00 Topical Area 3

(Lead by Qu) 12:30-1:30 Lunch 1:00-2:00 Lunch 1:30-3:30 Topical Area 2

(Lead by O’Neill) 2:00-4:00 Topical Area 4

(Lead by Hoque) 3:30-4:00 Coffee Break 4:00-4:30 Coffee Break 4:00 – 6:00 WISB Career Panel 1

(Lead by Wen) 4:30 – 6:00 Topical Area Summaries

(Lead by Wen) 6:00 - 6:30 Day 1 Summary

(Lead by Duanmu)

7:00-9:00 Dinner and Social Hours 7:00 – 9:00 Dinner and Social Hours Activities in WISB@IBPC have been designed for early-career researchers including opportunities to meet with program managers from major funding agencies, ice-breaking presentations on future research directions, round table sessions on mini-proposal writing, career panel discussions, and other collaborative and networking opportunities. Table 2 summarizes activities during the second workshop.


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Figure 1 Assorted activities from both workshops.


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Table 2 Agenda of WISB@IBPC Workshop (September 23rd, 2018) 8:00 – 9:00 Breakfast and Opening 9:00 – 9:30 DOE Program Officer Presentation 9:30 – 10:15 Dalian WISB Workshop Recap – Needs and Gaps in Sustainable Building

Research 10:15 – 10:45 Coffee Break – Room 204 10:45 – 11:45 Panel 1: Career in Sustainable Building Areas and Work-life Balance 11:45 – 12:45 Lunch – Room 204 12:45 – 13:15 NSF Program Officer Presentation 13:15 – 14:15 Panel 2: Write a Successful NSF Career Proposal 14:15 – 14:35 ARPA-E Program Officer Presentation 14:35 – 15:00 Coffee Break – Room 204 15:00 – 16:30 Parallel Tracks

Track 1: Pitching your idea to a NSF/DOE program officer (one to one, 15 minutes each) Room 301, 302, and 501;

Track 2: Proposal Clinic (you can discuss your career or other proposal ideas with our proposal clinic panel, which is formed by career proposal winners and past NSF/DOE proposal reviewers) Room 404;

Track 3: Speed-date with other WISBers (you can get to know other WISB workshop participants and identify potential collaboration opportunities. We will provide imitated request for proposal to facilitate the discussion) Room 203.

16:30 – 17:00 Summary 18:30 – 20:30 (Optional) Dinner at Otro Cinco (206 S Warren St, Syracuse, NY 13202)

4. Participant Recruitment and Summary

During the recruitment process, we strived for a multidisciplinary participation and invited participants that covered the following research areas:

• Engineering: Architectural Engineering; Mechanical Engineering (HVAC related); Electrical Engineering (building-grid related); Materials (green building related).

• Non-Engineering: Architecture; Information Science (big data and database that are related to green building area); Social Science (behavior related) and Policy.

The invitees had a good mix of rankings (full, associate, and assistant professors, as well as graduate students). Two recruitment channels were used: Channel 1) panel speakers and key participants (especially those from different disciplines) were identified and invited through steering committee members; and Channel 2) workshop flyers was made and distributed through professional societies such as ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers), ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers), AEI (Architectural Engineering Institute), AIA (American Institute of Architects), and international working groups such as IEA EBC Annex 66 working group. For those who were recruited through Channel 2, an application package that included a statement and a CV, was required. The steering committee evaluated and determined the final participants.


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In total, forty seven (47) female researchers have been sponsored by this grant. Among these researchers, five are full professor or senior researchers, twelve are associate professors, fifteen are assistant professors or junior researchers, and fifteen are PHD student and Post-Doc researchers. Appendix A provides a complete list of the participants for both workshops. Two keynote speakers were invited to represent the U.S. Delegates and the Chinese Delegates for the first workshop. The U.S. keynote speaker was Dean Addington from the School of Architecture, University of Texas at Austin (https://soa.utexas.edu/people/michelle-addington). Her presentation titled “Lessons Learned in Sustainability” provided an eye-opening discussion on the topic of sustainability and its relationship with buildings. The Chinese keynote speaker was Dean Yingxin Zhu from the School of Architecture, Tsinghua University (http://www.arch.tsinghua.edu.cn/chs/data/shizi/sz/e/zhuyingxin.htm). Her intriguing presentation, titled “How to create comfortable and healthy indoor environment? -A new challenge for sustainable building”, offered a comprehensive literature review on the topic of

indoor environment and thermal comfort. Program officers from three federal funding agencies (NSF, U.S. Department of Energy, and ARPA-E), who were managing funding in the sustainable building areas, were invited for the second workshop to introduce their programs and funding opportunities, and to network with the workshop participants via small group meetings and discussions.

5. Summary of Discussions on Sustainable Building Topical Areas and Career Panels The discussion of future directions in sustainable building research provided a much-needed opportunity for participants to become familiar with each other’s background, which helped foster future collaborations. Among many perspectives in sustainable building research, we identified the following four topical areas to frame the workshop. These topical areas were formed to best capture the current sustainable building research trends and to provide integrated platforms for futuristic roadmap discussions: 5.1 Topical Area 1 Human Building Interactions (HBIs) and Their Impact on Building Sustainability Sustainable building research community increasingly acknowledges the importance of human related information in energy management. Recent work by Azar and Menassa (2010, 2011a, b),


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for example, have incorporated dynamic modeling of occupancy load and simulated occupant energy use characteristics in buildings and proved that there is more than 25% variation in the energy use when dynamic occupancy parameters are used. While previous work takes into account dynamic occupancy trends (Clements-Croome, 2011), occupant preferences (Wu and Noy, 2010, Qiao et al, 2006, Dounis and Caraiscos, 2009, Duangsuwan, and Liu, 2010, Schumann et al., 2010) and occupant behavior (Azar and Menassa, 2010, 2011a, Saelens et al., 2011, Yu et al., 2011, Goldstein, et al., 2010, Pan et al., 2010), it mostly implements these parameters at an aggregate level (e.g. occupied/unoccupied) and only as input data rather than as controllable variables. Studies (Gill et al. 2010, and Niu et al., 2016) further demonstrates that the lack of actual occupant-related data is one of the main causes for the discrepancies between simulated and real building energy performances when using building performance simulation platforms. A new field at the intersection of human computer interaction and building science, Human-Building Interaction entails building user’s experiences with the built environment and as a result the change of both building and user behavior. For example, user interactions with building elements such as windows or blinds would impact both the comfort of users (e.g., changes in lighting levels) and performance of the building (e.g., increased solar gain causing cooling system to activate). Interactions could take place between users and building elements (windows, doors, blinds), systems (lighting system, HVAC system), and other building artifacts. In order to further define the HBI area and come up with several new HBI ideas, a design sprint was organized during the workshop. A design sprint is process that uses design thinking with five phases: define (identification of top three success measures), sketch (brainstorm of several potential ideas), decide (selection of one idea among many), prototype (define who it involves, what it does, what it is, who needs it and assumptions), and validate (quick presentation of the idea and voting). Workshop participants were broken into five groups and given about an hour to go through these phases of agile development. The top three measures of HBI success, identified by the participants, were user adaption, human-centered control and user satisfaction. Below is a summary of five ideas developed by five teams:

• Team 1: A water system (for residential buildings), which educates people about the use of water and how users also pollute the water system. Measures of how much water is used and the different chemicals disposed into the system to be displayed by this system to educate the users. The system requires user engagement, sensors, meters and a collection diversion system.

• Team 2: A layer system for thermal control for humidity and air temperature, which also educates the users by providing feedback about the energy consequences of each setpoint.


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The aim of this system is to improve comfort in buildings while reducing energy consumption and educating building users.

• Team 3: A system with autonomous agents for sensing and controlling environment while negotiating between users and building. This system with both fixed and mobile sensors focuses on decision making and negotiation both at the individual and group (collective) levels in a building.

• Team 4: A system, named OctoBot, that focuses on occupancy patterns and thermal comfort with likeable features, and that collects and understands user’s emotional status and preferences while continuously monitoring building status and configures the environment to satisfy building occupants. The system builds on the developments in robotics, building science and social science.

• Team 5: A smartphone-based system, named Hygee, that is connected to building management system and also has the ability to sense the environment as well as the users. The system collectively communicates with the building users to elevate discomfort in buildings. It requires sensors, lighting, and noise modules in addition to the thermal comfort module.

The participants voted and Team 5’s idea received the most votes. Some of the identified needs and gaps for the HBI area were: (1) research on privacy concerns and other ethical issues as they pertain to user data collection and use of this information in building operations; (2) research on user engagement methods for the development of HBI solutions; (3) living labs that could be shared among researchers in this field in order to evaluate different HBI ideas and validate them in similar conditions; and (4) need for educating building users and operators for wide adoption of HBI solutions in buildings. 5.2 Topical Area 2: Big Data Enabled Intelligent Operation for Sustainable Buildings A significant amount of energy consumed by buildings is by their heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems. The quality and operation of HVAC system also directly affect the indoor environmental quality. Efficient and automatic building operation algorithms (e.g., controls, demand responses, and automated fault diagnosis and commissioning) could help improve the energy efficiency of HVAC systems and thus reduce the overall energy consumption in buildings and result in better indoor environmental quality. Traditionally, building control algorithms are based on ad-hoc and heuristic rule-based approaches that typically require significant efforts in the tuning process during the commissioning and retro-commissioning processes (Lu et al., 2012 and Brambley et al., 2005). Furthermore, the tuned control approaches may not be close to the optimal solution and control performance cannot be guaranteed if the actual operational conditions have drifted from these trail-and-error based tuning ranges. In addition, malfunctioned building equipment, sensor, and control system,


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which are considered as top causes for “deficient” building system, add the complexity of the problem (Katipamula and Brambley, 2005a and b). Moreover, suffering from massive data flow from building systems, it is common that the overloaded building operators disable or ignore data provided by building control-operation-fault diagnosis service platforms. In fact, this has been a major market barrier for data-driven building automation systems to be adopted in the commercial sector. In addition, existing building energy diagnosis and control strategies typically do not engage occupants’ feedback/inputs into the decision loop, resulting a lost opportunity to better serve the occupants (Hong et al., 2016). To fill in the above gaps, the emerging technologies that need to be exploited and discussed in this workshop are:

(i) Networked distributed systems to support the computations in real time for measurement and decision support to maintain energy savings, occupant thermal comfort, and integration with larger infrastructures as well as alternative energy resources;

(ii) Object-oriented modeling platforms that enable modular and rapid assembly and design of system configurations and automated data analytics techniques for diagnostics;

(iii) Advances in energy efficient system designs and associated control strategies and implementable energy diagnostics; and

(iv) Effective human-machine interface that can strengthen the collaboration of humans in machine-intelligence-based intelligent building operations for high performance buildings.

Dr. O’Neill gave a presentation on the challenges and gaps associated to this emerging area of data-enabled intelligent building operation (IBO). The participants were grouped for further discussions. Each participant was given two minutes to talk about her version for IBO. Research challenges were then discussed among group members. Each participant was then asked to team up with other two persons and take the next five minutes to compare and consolidate lists. Each subgroup was asked to discuss their list of challenge to the whole table. Based on the discussions and consensus, each table was asked to write down the top 2 challenges that the group agreed on. After these gap and challenge discussions, each table was asked to have some discussions on the research and collaborative opportunities to address identified challenges in the area of data-enabled intelligent building operation. One representative for each table was then asked to briefly talk about the top two challenges and the proposed solutions/research idea. Through an active discussion, the participants have agreed that the following four challenges and gaps are existing for data-enabled intelligent building operation.

i. Definitions of intelligent buildings are not clear. What is the most important aspect for the intelligence in buildings? How to let the public know the importance of IBO?

ii. The following issues exist when we deal with the data in building: o Data availability ;


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o Data storage, security and privacy; o Data presentation for meaningful; and o How to work with IRB to handle human-related data is not clearly understood.

iii. Effective collaborations with data scientists are lacking. iv. Cost of the implementation is still too high to scale the data-enabled IBO.

Potential solutions to addressed the challenges and fill the knowledge gaps were discussed and summarized in the following four areas.

i. Publicity: a) Pilot field work to demonstrate the intelligence and build up the awareness b) Educate people outside the building domain.

ii. Data: a) Advanced sensing with low cost and low maintenance to make more data

available b) Data fusion to surrogate data to inform data c) Use human-being as one of data sources (human virtual sensor) d) Donate and share the data through some networks such as EBC Annex.

iii. Collaborations: a) Collaborate with social scientists b) Collaborate with existing resources from other fields such as computer science

department or Google rather than start from the scratch c) Explore different multidisciplinary programs: NSF-CRISP, BIGDATA, DIBBS,

GOALI, DOE, and ARPA-E iv. Cost:

a) Automatically create, calibrate, and update models b) Lifecycle Building Information Model (BIM) c) Implementable control sequences d) Risk and uncertainty analysis will help reduce the cost

5.3 Topical Area 3 Sustainable Envelope, Materials, and Building Design for Sustainable Buildings Sustainable envelop, materials, and building design could help reduce the energy and material consumption as well as mitigate the environmental impact throughout the entire building life span from construction to demolition. The building envelope separates the indoor and outdoor environments of a building, and is the key factor that determines the quality and controls the indoor conditions irrespective of transient outdoor (Sadineni et al., 2011). However, traditional envelope can only provide limited insulation in walls due to thickness constraints (Alotaibi and Riffat, 2014), and windows are often regarded as a less energy efficient component with a larger maintenance requirement (Baetens et al., 2010). Furthermore, the use of traditional construction materials such as cement consumes immense amount of energy and causes severe pollution during manufacturing of the material, building construction, and demolition (Hammond and


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Jones, 2008). In addition, the issue of sustainability has often been overlooked during the design phase of building construction, even though it is the best time to integrate strategies to improve energy efficiency and reduce energy consumption of the building (Pacheco et al., 2012). Moreover, conventional buildings are designed with a central focus on providing shelter and protection, satisfying comfort requirements at the expense of energy consumption (Loonen, et al., 2013). To overcome the above challenges, emerging technologies in building design, envelop, and materials will be discussed in this workshop. These technologies include:

(i) Passive energy saving building envelope such as walls with enhanced insulation and thermal mass, fenestration (windows and doors) with solar gain control, and solar shading/green roof to reduce building thermal load;

(ii) Sustainable building materials that can substitute the energy and pollution intensive construction materials as well as those that provide improved performance in thermal conductivity, heat capacity, solar reflectivity, and thermal emissivity;

(iii) Sustainable building design strategies and methodologies that can reduce the life-cycle energy consumption and environmental impact while also improve the level of both indoor comfort and resilience of the building.

The panel discussion had very productive and successful discussions on the topic of the sustainable envelope, materials, and design for buildings. Dr. Qu led the discussion for two hours. In the first 15 minutes, she gave a presentation about the impacts of building enveloped on the energy and environment, the state-of-the-art of the topic, the recent research trends, and the example of ongoing research projects on the subject. After the presentation, the panel started to brainstorm the challenges in the

SEMBD and the proposals to address the top two challenges. The panel discussion started with the 2-min introduction of the members of the table and 5-mins self-reflection on the questions. Each person around the table then worked on their answers to the questions and wrote down on the index cards. After that, they were paired to discuss and summarize to one agreed responses and recorded on an index card. Then two pairs joined for the summary of the accepted answers from the two couples. Finally, the entire table discussed the agreed with the final top three challenges in the SEMBD and two R&D proposals to address two of the three challenges. Almost all the five tables thought that life cycle analysis should be considered in the process of the material selection, production, design, construction, and operation of the building envelopes. The multi-functional integration of high-performance facades is highly needed to meet the requirements from lighting, acoustic, thermal, structure and others. The climate adaption is the need for future building envelopes. The system-level optimization should be used for innovative material and design to share the market. How does a building envelope ensure good air quality


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with climate change and local air pollution? Access to nature, local climate adaption, better performance evaluation methods, and social equality were also given. The proposals to address the above challenges include the following two areas: New Frameworks: 1. LCA assessment tool which can handle climate pattern, building type, and right technologies. 2. The tradeoff studies to analyze economic, social, and environmental performance in simulation for one project. 3. Building performance models to analyze the changes over a long time and integrated design process – involvements of all disciplines in buildings. 4. Multi-disciplinary simulation tools (BIM)- including data visualization, technique metric, decision-making models. New Technologies: 1. Breathable wall/ heat recovery – modular fitting with existing construction standard, 2. Innovations in windows- improved thermal and visual comfort, reduced noise, smaller HVAC, reduced peak loads, 3. Development of glazing materials with tunable optical properties (transmissivity and emissivity adjustable by wavelength) including materials 4. Novel Materials that are thin and provide tunable insulating and vapor permeability and materials that could be used in next-generation enthalpy exchange devices. 5.4 Topical Area 4: Sustainable Buildings for Urban Sustainability Cities are on the front line of climate change. They account for 75% of global energy consumption and 80% of greenhouse-gas emissions (International Energy Agency 2016). One of the greatest challenges of this century will be the development and management of sustainable urban spaces. Buildings comprise 40% of the overall energy consumption in cities, and play a significant role in driving urban sustainability goals (DOE 2010). Indeed, for city planners and policy makers, the primary instrument to promote a city’s energy profile or ensure its resilience against climate change is the development of standards and regulations for designing and constructing sustainable buildings (Bulkeley and Betsill 2005). A city’s Climate Action Plan (CAP) or Energy Conservation Mandates (ECMs) are widely publicized efforts to offset greenhouse gas emissions and lower energy use to reduce air pollution and waste production, and improve the quality of life among urban inhabitants (McManus 2012). Both CAP and ECMs are based on outputs that are primarily reported from building energy profiles, ecological modeling, or urban input-output tools that are used to manage specific sectors of urban activity. The link between sustainable buildings and sustainable cities is assumed, but it has not been systematically analyzed. As a result, it is unknown whether a specific policy (e.g. to green the roofs of all public buildings in Chicago), will have the desired aggregate effect of reducing urban heat island effect (a CAP goal) or the undesired effect of compromising the energy performance of building envelope systems (an ECM opportunity). A knowledge gap thus exists between a given sustainability policy and the outcomes expected. There is a critical need for innovative methods to analyze and predict the aggregate impacts of sustainability policies on the urban environment. A systematic framework for assessing the effects of sustainable building design, construction, and renovation in the urban environment is essential to advance sustainable development and planning (Duarte et al. 2012).


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To introduce the workshop, Dr. Hoque presented an overview of Grand Challenges facing practitioners, designers, and researchers of the urban built environment. The slides and slide notes for this presentation are included on wisb.site. The participants were organized into five different groups with an equal number of international and US delegates. Activity 1: Grand Challenges. Each group of participants discussed grand challenges that they envision will complicate the design and management of urban spaces in three different timelines.

• Focus on challenges that are immediate – i.e. challenges that urban areas are facing now and have to be resolved in the next 1-10 years.

• Focus on challenges that are in the near future – i.e. challenges that need to address in 10-25 years.

• Focus on challenges that cities will face in the next 25-100 years. While each group brought up many different challenges facing cities today, there was generally a consensus that the challenges fall into major categories of energy supply, climate change related hazards and vulnerabilities, water and air pollution, population growth and mass migration, and social equity and justice. The following table summarizes the grand challenges in these categories.

Category 1-10 years 10-25 years 25-100 years Energy Grid stability

Electricity storage District renewables Air pollution (coal power) Transit and transportation

Fossil fuel decline Increasing energy cost Declining infrastructure

Energy consumption restrictions Renewable energy Smart Cities

Climate Change

Storms Coastal flooding Wildfires Drought Heat waves

ß More of that Aging bldg. materials Sea level rise

Flood barriers Buried/underground infrastructure CC-codes and regulations

Air and Water Pollution

Urban air quality Groundwater depletion Waste management

Indoor and outdoor air quality Water supply/shortage Species extinction

Food shortages Water quality

Population Growth and Migration

Rural to urban migration Traffic congestion Housing scarcity Refugees and amnesty seekers

Overcrowding Changing demographics Antibiotic resistance

Population restrictions Coastal city relocation Food shortage

Social Justice

Poverty Unemployment Income equality Racial profiling Public education

Affordability Aging population Health Care Privatization of social programs

Equitable food supply Food and water shortages Ethics of AI

Activity 2: Research Design. In the next activity, the groups wrote down the research areas they envisioned would be fruitful areas of exploration to address each of the urban challenges they


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identified in activity 1. They discussed these research areas and which challenge should be tackled now. They were asked to answer the following five questions.

1. What is the problem your group is going to address? 2. Why is it important to address this work now? 3. How is the research going to address this problem? 4. What indicators will you measure to study this problem? 5. What are the expected outcomes of this work?

The groups all elected to address two broad categories of challenges, and there was little overlap between the two categories in terms of theoretical underpinnings and conceptual framework. Category 1 – Infrastructural systems. Two groups tackled the issue of infrastructure and the need for new ways to identify, operate, diversify, integrate, and strengthen current infrastructures for communication, transportation, and energy and water services. Both emphasized that climate change related impacts will critically stress current infrastructural systems, and that there is a need to understand how to make them more resilient and connected. Both groups suggested that there is a clear need to develop infrastructural network modeling tools that would be able to apply a variety of direct and indirect stressors and predict the behavior of the system. Category 2: Urban Livability. The other three groups focused on broadly what can be described as challenges that will impact the quality of life of urban inhabitants, but the approach, indicators, and outcomes of QoL challenges were quite different for each of the three groups. One group focused on the development of monitoring and certification systems and protocols for food, air, and water quality. Another group focused exclusively on air pollution reduction strategies, including tracking and identifying sources of air pollution including factories, traffic, and biomass burning point sources, by modeling and monitoring tools that would locate and characterize local and global sources of pollutants. And the third group generally was concerned with resource scarcity and how urban life will have to change to make use of less space, less energy, and less food. Not surprisingly, everyone in the room agreed that there is an urgent need to develop data mining and analytic techniques that combine different metrics, information sources, indicators, and modeling paradigms. And equally important is the need to address how these quantitative or synthetic frameworks for modeling urban spaces needs to also integrate social and humanistic values and dynamics. Activity 3: Interdisciplinary Collaboration. The third activity was intended to get the group to think broadly about the expertise that may be necessary to succeed in solving the grand challenges identified in the first and second activities. The last part of this workshop focused on making connections across different disciplines and this was perhaps the least successful exercise. Two groups were very specific about who they would “invite” to the team, and these two groups also happened to have the most detailed research designs. One group identified the disciplinary fields that would need to be represented in their team but they did not name specific researchers. Two groups did not articulate the collaborative opportunities that would arise from their research design, and this is likely because


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they were far too open-ended in their approach and/or goals to identify a specific field or expert in that field. If this exercise were to be repeated, it would be more effective to workshop the research design activity (#2) with more input from the moderator, providing more feedback and guidance to help the teams to distill the challenge into a research project that has the potential to produce valuable results. The urban workshop was the final workshop event in the WISB conference in Dalian, and in some ways the outcomes and perspectives shared in this panel reflected the overall group perspective. There was a consensus that the urban built environment is not progressing on a sustainable or resilient path, and that this was contributing to social, economic, and health disparities for a majority of the global population. The workshop was a sober reminder that there is much work to be done. Yet, instead of being dispirited by the challenges we face, the groups thoughtfully, generously, seriously, and inclusively worked together to suggest ways, both specific and general, to improve urban life for future generations. 5.5 Career Panel Discussions Three career panel discussions were organized (two in the Dalian WISB workshop and one in WISB@IBPC). In each panel discussion, a panel was formed that contained three to four members who were associate or full professors. The Panels started with sharing their own life-experiences and tips. The Panels were asked to answer pre-designed questions such as:

how to promote woman in this area; what the career development hurdles and potential solutions are; how to encourage more women to pursue leadership roles; how to manage work-life-family balance; society communication skills and academic network development methods; salary negotiation; handle (and help others to handle) harassment, and skills/tips for mentoring graduate students…

Detailed questions have been summarized in Appendix C. The audience also had the opportunity to ask questions and had open-end discussions with the panelists. Key take-aways from the leadership and career path panel discussions include:

• Many current leaders, including Dean Addington, did not want to be a leader at the beginning. What inspired them often was a desire to make a change;

• Main reasons that prevent women from seeking leadership positions: o often underestimate their leadership skills and potentials; o Family responsibilities;

• Fellowship programs such as ELATE and HERS are good at equipping women with skills; • We need to actively shift the institution culture around us; • There are personality traits (assertiveness, loudness, aggressiveness…) that could affect

how others consider one’s leadership potentials; • Need mentors and supporters for woman faculty.

Key take-aways from the work-life balance panel discussions include:

• A real balance probably is not realistic; • Live in the moment and do not require yourself to do the things that you “suppose to do”; • Need a good support system (spouse/partners; grandparents; institution; community….);


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• Try to find your “Fabulous Five” – five women that you can call no matter what, different age, background etc. but you have full trust.

• Need culture change (minimizing early morning and evening meetings, for example); • Need institution support (on-site daycare; emergent daycare; business trip child support;

wellness support…); • USC’s woman advice group which can even negotiate tenure extension for a junior faculty

is a good model. Many tips on how to better manage heavy family responsibilities are provided in the work-life balance discussion video record, which is available on wisb.site.

6. Collaboration We have collaborated with Professor Lin Duanmu (a professor in Dalian University of Technology http://www.vtt.fi/sites/eescu/en/dalian-university-of-technology-(dut)) in organizing this workshop. Prof. Duanmu secured support from her university to sponsor the following:

a. Facility rental (workshop venue, equipment, etc.) in Dalian University of Technology, Dalian China (a beautiful costal city);

b. Coffee breaks; c. Financial sponsorship for Chinese

participants (including faculty, female graduate students), as well as some European and East-Asian participants. They estimate to financially (full or partially) sponsor a minimum of 20 Non-US participants;

d. Reduced-cost lodging and meals. Professor Duanmu and her students helped organizing all activities, including social activities such as coffee breaks, lunches, and dinners. With their help we were able to offer children’s programs (not sponsored by this grant) for participants who took their families with them. Professor Bess Krietemeyer, Dr. Chetna Khosla Chianese and other staff from Syracuse University have provided great help in organizing the WISB@IBPC workshop.

7. Workshop Outputs and Evaluation

A website (wisb.site) has been created for both workshops and for distributing the findings of the workshop. This final report and all presentation materials (per authors’ agreement) are posted on the workshop website (wisb.site) and are available to the public. One pre-workshop and one


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post-workshop (within a month) surveys have been conducted to understand: 1) the status of the participants before attending the workshop; 2) feedback from the participants; and 3) immediate impacts of the workshop. Another post-workshop survey will be conducted in the summer of 2019 to understand longer term impacts of the workshop. Summaries of the post-workshop survey results are provided in Appendix B.

8. Intellectual Merit The diversified research, social, and evaluation activities proposed in this workshop have

1) Identified the needs, research gaps and roadmaps for emerging research directions in sustainable building research;

2) Provided an international and multidisciplinary collaborative platform for women in sustainable building research to generate novel ideas and develop long-term collaborative relationships; and

3) Advanced our understanding of how to promote women in sustainable building research by identifying and addressing career needs, challenges, and roadblocks through panel discussions and survey studies.

9. Broader Impacts

The WISB workshops focus on promoting women in sustainable building research by

1) providing international and multidisciplinary networking opportunities for woman faculty, especially those at the beginning of their academic careers and near-graduation PHD students;

2) developing an understanding of how to support woman faculty to overcome the career roadblocks;

3) building rapport among women in sustainable building research; and 4) support and encourage woman faculty to pursue more leadership roles.

Promoting woman faculty in sustainable buildings will not only stimulate growth and innovation in this area but also attract more women to enter engineering and encourage women to pursue more leadership roles. The inclusion of women has the potential to positively shift current sustainability and energy practices to better meet the needs of the poor, minority groups, and other under-represented populations. The findings from this workshop will also help to develop better design and operation practices for sustainable buildings and therefore benefit the society at large.

10. Workshop Steering Committee Chair: Jin Wen, Professor, Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, Drexel University Committee Members: Burcin Becerik-Gerber, Stephen Schrank Early Career Chair in Civil and Environmental

Engineering and Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Southern California, Champion for Topical Area 1.


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Qing (Cindy) Chang, Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stony Brook University.

Lin Duanmu, Professor, Director, School of Civil Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, International Collaborator.

Simi Hoque, Associate Professor, Dept. of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, Drexel University, Champion for Topical Area 4.

Zheng O’Neill, Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Alabama, Champion for Topical Area 2.

Ming Qu, Associate Professor of Architectural Engineering, School of Civil Engineering, Purdue University, Champion for Topical Area 3.


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Appendix A Attendee List A.1 Attendee List for Dalian WISB workshop

Last Name First Name

Rank Research Area University

Wen Jin Prof. Building control and fault diagnostics; Human-in-the-loop modeling; Building-grid integration

Drexel University

Becerik-Gerber

Burcin Asso. Prof.

User-centered sustainable built environments; Situational awareness for built environments; Building/infrastructure information modeling and visualization

University of South California

Chang Cindy Asso. Prof.

Manufacturing system modeling and simulation; Real-time energy management of manufacturing systems

Stony Brook University

Hoque Simi Asso. Prof.

Computational methods and tools to reduce building energy and environmental impacts; building performance and its impact on building occupants and the urban environment;

Drexel University

Ming Qu Asso. Prof.

Solar cooling and heating; Absorption refrigeration / heat pump; Building skins

Purdue University

O'Neill Zheng Asso. Prof.

Intelligent building operations; Building Performance modeling; Smart buildings

University of Alabama

Addington Michelle Prof. Strategic intersections between the optimal domains of physical phenomena with the practical domains of spatial, geo-political, economic, and cultural systems

University of Texas at Austin

Asadi Somayeh Ass. Prof.

Building construction; Life cycle cost; Occupant behavior

Penn State University

Bilec Melissa Asso. Prof.

Life cycle assessment; Urban energy modeling; Indoor air quality

University of Pittsburgh

Boric-Lubecke

Olga Prof. Sensor development and Occupancy sensing

University of Hawaii

Decker Martina Ass. Prof.

Emergent materials; Smart materials and nanotechnology for built environment

New Jersey Institute of Technology

Inanici Mehlika Asso. Prof.

Computational lighting design and analysis; Building performance simulation; Performance based design workflows

University of Washington

Menassa Carol Asso. Prof.

Occupant energy use behavior in buildings; Agent based modeling; Distributed/coupled simulation; Thermal comfort of building occupants

University of Michigan

Nateghi Roshanak (Roshi)

Assi. Prof.

Infrastructure sustainability and resilience; Disaster risk management; Climate change and extreme events

Purdue University


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A.1 Attendee List for Dalian WISB workshop (Cont.)

Last Name First Name

Rank Research Area University

Proksch Gundula Asso. Prof.

Sustainable infrastructure for cities; Interdisciplinary practices in the built environment

University of Washington

Qiu Lucy Ass. Prof.

Occupant behaviors; Economic incentives; Field experiment

University of Maryland

Rempel Alexandra Ass. Prof.

Passive heating, passive cooling and associated control systems

University of Oregon

Schauer Caroline Prof. Natural polymers; Materials for built environment

Drexel University

Song Li Asso. Prof.

Building energy system optimization and control; Centralized HVAC system fault detection; Energy efficiency technology developments

University of Oklahoma

Wang Liping Ass. Prof.

Building performance modeling; Energy-efficient building system operation

University of Wyoming

Wu Teresa Prof. Informatics; Big data analytics; Distributed decision for energy systems

Arizona State University

Zhang Hui Senior Sci.

Human thermal comfort in complex environments; Comfort modeling

University of California, Berkeley

All participants in Dalian WISB workshop.


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A.2 Attendee List for WISB@IBPC

First Last Affiliation Panelist Ph.D. Student

Post-doc Ass. Prof.

Dr. Yewande Abraham Rochester Institute of Technology

X

Alpha Yacob

Arsano Massachusetts Institute of Technology

X

Dr. Somayeh Asadi The Pennsylvania State University

X

Dr. Cynthia Chen NSF X

Yujiao Chen Harvard University X Mengyuan Chu Syracuse University X Dr. Julia Day Washington State Univ. X Torkan Fazli Illinois Institute of

Technology X

Dr. Jennifer Gerbi ARPA-E X

Dr. Elizabeth Hewitt Stony Brook University X Dr. Simi Hoque Drexel University X X Dr. Yang-

Seon Kim Wichita State University X

Dr. Rui Liu University of Florida X Dr. Katie McConky Rochester Institute of

Technology X

Dr. Carol Menassa University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

X X

Leila Nikdel Clarkson University X Gokce Ozcelik University of Southern

California X

Dr. Siddika Pasi Rutgers University X

Mahsa Safari The Pennsylvania State

Unive X

Dr. Holly Samuelson Harvard University X Azadeh

Omidfar Sawyer University of Michigan X

Dr. Caroline Schauer Drexel University X X Shideh Shams

Amiri Drexel University X

Dr. Marina Sofos DOE X X Xiaoqqin Sun University of Kansas X Ioanna Tsoulou Rutgers University X Irmak Turan Massachusetts Institute of

Technology X

Dr. Yu Wang Iowa State University X Dr. Jin Wen Drexel University X X Dr. Xiaojing Xu University of Tennessee,

Knoxville X

Nari Yoon Harvard University X Dan Zhao Illinois Institute of

Technology X


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Appendix B Post-workshop Survey (2018)


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Comments: It was useful to have discussions on work/family balance. More discussions on the difficulty of working on male dominant department cultures; further discussions on dealing both conscious or unconscious biases from senior faculty; etc., dealing with adversary reactions... The limited discussions turned on "success stories" rather than an honest look at very common problems we all face. Our table had a harder time on Day 2, in both sessions, keeping track of exactly what our goals were in each section. In general, it would be helpful in these fast-paced workshops (which I loved!) to have a printed list, maybe one per table, of specific products desired at each stage. Our group had different impressions of what we were supposed to be doing at each stage, so we spent a lot of time resolving those ideas that could have been used more productively. I would love to see further discussion of the particular issues faced by women in academic couples, including the problems of finding jobs for both people; of a spousal hire gaining legitimacy (whether the spouse is a man or woman - I've seen men with spousal-hire appointments also be disregarded systematically); and of working within nontraditional appointments, such as soft-money or part-time tenure track arrangements. More presentations on recent research from leading researchers will be great.


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Appendix C Career Panel Questions The following questions/topics have been discussed during the career panels in these two workshops. Complete video records of the Dalian WISB Workshop career panel discussions are available at wisb.site. Leadership and skills:

1) Please give a brief introduction of your career path and what inspired that path; 2) Please talk about the major challenges that you have encountered during your career path; 3) Do you think being a woman adds more challenges? Why? How did you overcome them? 4) Do you think there is a lack of woman in leadership position in the WISB area? If so,

what do you think is the reason? 5) What do you think needs to be changed institution-wise or culture-wise to promote more

woman into WISB area, help them to be more successful as a faculty, and encourage them into leadership positions?

6) As a leader/administrator, do you see skill-sets or maybe mind-sets that are missing among woman faculty which might prevent them from being more successful?

7) Any tips on a) communication/network methods? B) salary negotiation? C) handle (and help others to handle) harassment?

8) Skills/tips for mentoring graduate students and/or post-doc? Work-life balance:

1) Your situation and how do you balance work/life? 2) What institution and culture change you think should occur to make the balance easier? 3) Did you set back your tenure clock? How do you feel about it? Was it easy in your

institute? 4) How did you manage the breast-feeding situation? Tips? 5) How did you manage the sick-child/sick parent situation? Tips?

Career Opportunities:

1) What kind of career can WISBers consider? Can you talk about the pro/con of different kind of career path?

2) How to find academic positions/national lab positions/industry positions? 3) Do you have tips to be shared with woman researchers that might help them to nail an

interview? Have you observed anything/situations that male interviewees often behave better than female interviewees?

4) Can you share the lessons that you have learned from your tenure track process? 5) Can you describe your family/personal life situation and how do you balance work/life? 6) What institution and culture change you think should occur to make the balance easier? 7) Do you have kids? How have the pregnancy affect your career? Did you set back your

tenure clock? How do you feel about it? Was it easy in your institute? NSF CAREER Proposal:


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1) Can you describe your CAREER award? 2) Can you describe how you wrote the CAREER proposal: 1) How did you generate the

idea? Was it from your PHD thesis? 2) How did you explore the idea and develop it into a full proposal? 3) What additional resources you have obtained during this process (support letter? Facility? Preliminary data?)

3) What are the major differences between a CAREER proposal and a regular NSF proposal?

4) From your view point, how to write a successful NSF proposal? 5) If you have served as a CAREER proposal reviewer, what common mistakes you have

observed that people often make?

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