Research
My research explores airflow, heat, and environmental transport in buildings and cities, with the goal of creating healthier, more comfortable, and energy-efficient built environments.
I combine computational fluid dynamics (CFD), wind-tunnel experiments, field measurements, environmental sensing, and data-driven modeling to understand environmental processes across scales, from airflow through a building opening to thermal environments at the urban scale.
A central direction of my research is to connect physical understanding with prediction and application: understanding environmental phenomena through experiments and simulation, developing fast predictive models, and ultimately applying them to building design, environmental control, and climate-responsive cities.
Building Airflow & Natural Ventilation
Natural ventilation can reduce building energy use and improve indoor environmental quality, but its performance is strongly affected by fluctuating wind conditions, surrounding buildings, opening configurations, and indoor geometry.
My research investigates the physical mechanisms governing wind- and buoyancy-driven ventilation, from airflow through openings to whole-building ventilation and contaminant transport.
I combine wind-tunnel experiments, tracer-gas measurements, and CFD simulations to characterize ventilation processes and develop practical prediction methods.
Current research
- Wind- and buoyancy-driven natural ventilation
- Cross and single-sided ventilation
- Wind pressure and ventilation-rate prediction
- Effects of surrounding buildings and urban configurations
- Local ventilation effectiveness and contaminant transport
- Ventilation of vehicles and semi-enclosed spaces
Urban Microclimate & Outdoor Environment
Cities create highly heterogeneous thermal environments through interactions among urban morphology, solar radiation, vegetation, water bodies, surface materials, and airflow.
Understanding these interactions is increasingly important for climate adaptation and the design of comfortable and resilient outdoor spaces.
My research combines field measurements, mobile environmental sensing, urban-scale modeling, and spatial analysis to investigate how urban form influences pedestrian-scale environmental conditions.
Current and emerging research
- Urban thermal environments and pedestrian thermal comfort
- River and waterfront cooling effects
- Mobile measurement of thermal environment and air quality
- Urban morphology and solar exposure
- Microclimate–building interactions
- Climate-responsive urban design
I am particularly interested in extending this research to cities and buildings in Southeast Asia, where hot and humid climates, rapid urbanization, and intensive cooling demand create important opportunities for climate-responsive architecture and urban environmental design.
Data-driven Building Physics
Detailed CFD simulations provide rich information about airflow and thermal environments, but they remain computationally expensive for many design, optimization, and real-time control applications.
My research develops reduced-order and machine-learning models that retain physical information while enabling rapid prediction.
By combining CFD databases, physical constraints, and sparse sensor measurements, I aim to bridge the gap between high-fidelity environmental simulation and real-time building applications.
Research directions
- Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD)
- Reduced-order modeling
- Deep Operator Networks (DeepONet)
- Physics-informed machine learning
- Sparse-sensor reconstruction of environmental fields
- Surrogate models for rapid environmental prediction
- Digital twins and real-time building environmental control
CFD / Experiments / Measurements
POD / DeepONet / Physics-informed ML
Fast Prediction / Design / Control
Building Energy & Climate-responsive Design
Building energy performance is closely connected to the surrounding climate, urban microclimate, ventilation strategy, and environmental control.
As an emerging direction of my research, I am extending airflow and microclimate studies toward whole-building environmental and energy performance.
Research interests
- Natural ventilation potential and energy-saving effects
- Climate-responsive building operation
- Building energy simulation
- Microclimate–building energy interactions
- Coupling airflow prediction with building performance simulation
- Environmental sensing and building control
Research Approach
Environmental problems in buildings and cities often cannot be understood through a single method. My research therefore combines numerical, experimental, measurement-based, and data-driven approaches across different spatial scales.
Computational Modeling
CFD, RANS/LES, building performance simulation, and urban environmental modeling.
Experimental Methods
Wind-tunnel experiments, tracer-gas techniques, and airflow measurements.
Field Measurement
Building monitoring, mobile environmental sensing, and urban-scale measurements.
Data-driven Methods
Reduced-order modeling, machine learning, sparse sensing, and physics-informed prediction.
Collaboration
We welcome collaborations with companies, universities, research institutes, and public organizations on building and urban environmental problems.
Our research combines CFD, wind-tunnel experiments, field measurements, environmental sensing, and data-driven modeling, allowing us to approach problems from both fundamental and practical perspectives.
Potential areas of collaboration include building airflow and natural ventilation, urban microclimate, environmental measurement, building energy, environmental fluid mechanics, and data-driven prediction.
We are also particularly interested in developing international collaborative research in Southeast Asia related to climate-responsive buildings, natural ventilation, urban microclimate, and building energy.