NSU hosts “Interdisciplinary Data Structure for Collaborative Research in Sustainable Human-Building Ecosystems (SHBE) Workshop

Yong Tao, Ph.D., Dean and Professor, College of Engineering and Computing at Nova Southeastern University hosted the Interdisciplinary Data Structure for Collaborative Research in Sustainable Human-Building Ecosystems (SHBE) Workshop on June 5-6 at NSU Art Museum with support from Bonnie Clearwater, Director and Chief Curator of NSU Art Museum. The workshop was aimed at bringing together professionals from multiple disciplines, i.e., architects, civil engineers, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, computer scientists, social scientists, psychologists, and social/ public policy experts.

This workshop is part of a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded project “RCN-SEES: Predictive Modeling Network for Sustainable Human-Building Ecosystems (SHBE)”. The focus of this workshop was building energy efficiency by inspiring integrative and interdisciplinary platform in the context of social science and its application towards building design, development and operation considering contribution of human behavior in building energy efficiency.

Local industry was very enthusiastic about its participation in the workshop. Keynote speech was delivered by Mike Beedles (CEO, SATO Global) titled “Buildings of the future ‘Residing in futuristic Utopia’ ” concentrating on smart building Internet of Things (IoT) applications in future buildings. He was accompanied by Chad Moss (Executive VP, Moss Construction Management), and George Franco (President, Elevate Building Technology). Chad and George spoke about Virtual Design techniques implemented by Moss Construction Management in their recent projects with the use of Robotics and Virtual Reality (VR) in modern construction.  Other local business leaders attending the workshop and welcoming the attendees included Mike Weymouth (President, The Las Olas Company) and Alan Belt (IT Director, The Las Olas Company), Mike is the owner of Riverside Hotel where workshop attendees resided.

Another keynote speech was given by Travis Walter (Senior Scientific Engineering Associate) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) titled “DOE Building Performance Database.”

Junko Kazumi, Ph. D., Director of Technology Transfer, of NSU’s Office of Research and Technology Transfer welcomed all the workshop attendees on behalf of NSU.  A series of research projects were presented by researchers from various universities and research institutes, including  National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Iowa State University, Carnegie Mellon University, Texas A & M University, Louisiana State University, Florida International University, and faculty from College of Engineering and Computing of Nova Southeastern University.   This workshop also incorporated an activity of another NSF sponsored project named “Virtual Information-Fabric Infrastructure (VIFI) for Data-Driven Decisions from Distributed Data”, for which NSU is one of the collaborating institutions. Dr. Ashit Talukder (Bank of America Endowed Chair in Information Technology, Professor of Computer Science, and Director of the Charlotte Visualization Center, University of North Carolina, Charlotte) and his team spoke about the project and demonstrated its capabilities. The workshop concluded with breakout sessions which produced thought provoking outcomes for future research directions and implementations.