News

Himanshu Sharma to present team research at 5th High Performance Buildings Conference
We are pleased to announce that authors Soumik Sarkar, Linjiang Wu, Venkatesh Chinde, Himanshu Sharma, and Ulrike Passe have had their research paper accepted to the fifth annual High Performance Buildings Conference at Purdue University on July 9 to July 12. Their paper, "A Data-Driven Approach Towards Integration of Micro-climate Conditions for Prediction Building Energy Performance,” demonstrates a powerful methodology to more accurately model and predict the energy efficiency of housing units as they relate to their various environmental and built conditions. Sharma will be presenting the team’s work at the conference. Read More

July 4, 2018
Ulrike Passe presents Sustainable Cities team research at 8th NSF funded RCN Workshop
Ulrike Passe presented team research at the 8th workshop of the NSF funded Research Coordination Network (RCN) “ Integration of the Human Dimension in Product and Process Modeling in the Creation of Resilient and Sustainable Human-Building Ecosystems (SHBE) at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Architecture, Center for Building Performance and Diagnostics. Ulrike presented the hybrid physics data modeling framework integrating human behavior and thermo-physical data into our neighborhood energy model. Read More

May 30, 2018
SIMAUD 2018 accepts Tree Inventory Data in Urban Modeling paper by Passe, Thompson, Marmur, and Hashemi
We are proud to announce that the team comprised of Professor Ulrike Passe, Dr. Janette Thompson, and graduate research assistants Farzad Hashemi and Breanna Marmur have had their research paper, Developing a Workflow to Integrate Tree Inventory Data into Urban Energy Modeling, accepted to this year’s SIMAUD conference to be held at TU Delft University June 4th – 7th. The paper demonstrates the team’s research into creating a process for integrating urban forest inventory data into a 3D energy model, a development which has been used to analyze how forest shading impacts building energy performance in Midwest cities. This specific process integrates Grasshopper 3D modeling, Meerkat plug-in for Grasshopper, and GIS data. The annual conference, now into its ninth year, aims to promote alchemy between fields such as architecture, urban design, urban planning, building science, visualization, and simulation by highlighting emerging and cutting-edge research being done with simulation-based support systems. We are excited to have Professor Passe and Hashemi represent the Sustainable Cities team this upcoming June at the conference. Congratulations! Read More

April 11, 2018
Team member Wanyu Huang passes her M.S. thesis, Exploring Households’ Weatherization Adoptions: An Agent-based Approach
On behalf of the Sustainable Cities Research Group, we would like to offer our congratulations to Master student Wanyu Huang for having her thesis approved by The Graduate College review committee earlier this week. Huang's thesis, Exploring Households’ Weatherization Adoptions: An Agent-based Approach, serves as a critical assessment of her research, and gives further agency to the multi-disciplinary Des Moines Energy project that is being carried out by the S.C. team. Thank you Wanyu for your continued support and congratulations on your outstanding achievement! Read More

March 23, 2018
Ulrike Passe and Janette Thompson present poster at 2018 NCSE Conference and Global Forum.
On January 23rd, Ulrike Passe and Janette Thompson attended the 2018 National Council for Science and the Environment (NSCE) Conference in Washington D.C. to present their continued research on energy data mapping. The annual conference brings together a global interdisciplinary group of educators, scientists, advocates, and policy leaders to share their latest findings and achievements in the pursuit of more informed environmental decision making. Read More

January 25, 2018
Ulrike Passe presents on the panel “Building Socio-Technical Collaboration within Academia” at NSF-Sponsored Workshop
On November 30th, 2017 Ulrike Passe was invited to participate in the NSF-Sponsored Workshop on ‘Effective Community-University-Industry Collaboration Models for Smart and Connected Communities Research’ to speak on the panel “Building Socio-Technical Collaborations within Academia”. She talked about the opportunity for design disciplines to bring together researchers from diverse scientific, engineering and humanities fields into an integrated research teams at Iowa State University’s Sustainable City’s team. Read More

November 30, 2017
September Sustainable Cities Project Update
Through learning about and using our research team's prototype agent-based model, the Community Growers youth began to think about their community garden as a community gathering place as well as place to grow healthy food. Read More

October 9, 2017
Jacklin Stonewall will present a paper at the 61st Annual Meeting of Human Factors and Ergonomics Society in Austin, Texas
Graduate student, Jacklin Stonewall will present a paper on Best Practices for Engaging Underserved Populations. Read More

October 9, 2017
Linda Shenk and Mallory Riesberg present “Community Growers”
Linda Shenk and Mallory Riesberg present "Community Growers" Program for Youth in Des Moines at The Growing Sustainable Communities Conference in Dubuque, Iowa. The conference took place over two days (October 4th and 5th), and allowed for the sharing of research and ideas about creating more resilient communities. Read More

October 5, 2017
Ulrike Passe Presents at Alvar Aalto Meeting on Contemporary Architecture
Ulrike Passe, an Iowa State University associate professor of architecture, presented her paper on “Performance, data and the expanding field of sustainable design” at the 6th International Alvar Aalto Meeting on Contemporary Architecture – Technology and Humanism organized by the Alvar Aalto Academy at the Town Hall in Seinajoki, Finland, which was designed by Aalto in 1962. Read More

October 5, 2017