Dr.
John Zhai is Associate Professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and
Architectural Engineering (CEAE) at The
University of Colorado at Boulder (UCB). He has a unique and integrated background in
both Mechanical and Architectural Engineering with an Engineering Doctor degree
in Fluid Mechanics (Tsinghua
University, 1999) and a Ph.D. in Building Technology (MIT, 2003). Dr. Zhai has been
actively engaged in research activities in the field of fluid/thermal science
and building/energy/environment technology since 1994. His particular research interests and
expertise include:
l Experimental and numerical study of
building thermal and environmental systems;
l Indoor environmental quality
(thermal comfort and indoor air quality);
l Heating, ventilation and
air-conditioning (HVAC) system design and optimization;
l Immune and sustainable building
design and technology development.
As a primary researcher, Dr. Zhai
has completed a number of notable research and consulting projects on diverse
building energy and environment topics and published over 90 technical papers
in reputed journals and conferences.
Dr.
Zhai teaches “Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer”,
“Building Energy Systems”, “CFD Analysis for Built and Natural Environments”,
“Building Energy Laboratory”, and “Sustainable Building Design” at UCB. Dr. Zhai is also
Graduate Advisor at
Dr.
Zhai is an active member of several professional
societies, such as, ASHRAE, ASME, International Building Performance Simulation
Association (IBPSA), and International Society of Indoor Air Quality and
Climate (ISIAQ). Dr. Zhai
was an invited member for The Committee of Immune Buildings by The US National
Academies and The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), an Invited IAQ Expert
for National Laboratory Assessment by The US National Academies and National
Research Council (NRC), and an Invited Non-Member Roundtable Speaker by The
American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA).
Dr.
Zhai has been serving as Conference Chairs,
Advisory/Scientific Committee Members, Track and Session Chairs for many
building related conferences and symposiums, such as, IAQVEC2010, ASME Energy
Sustainability Conference (ES2009 and ES2010), IBPSA Building Simulation
Conference (BS2007 and BS2009), ROOMVENT 2009, COBEE2008, Indoor Air 2005,
etc. Dr. Zhai
is Associate Editor of The Open Civil Engineering Journal, Managing Guest
Editor for Building and Environment Journal (2009), Guest Editor for Energy and
Building Journal (2009), Panel Reviewer for Georgian National Science
Foundation (2008-2009), Panel Reviewer for US National Science Foundation
(2007-2010), and Invited Reviewer for National Office for Science and Technology
Awards (NOSTA) of China (2009-2010).
Dr.
Zhai has great experience managing an active research
team with people with different background.
In the past five years, Dr. Zhai has been
leading a team of 5 Post-Docs, more than 20 graduate students and a dozen
undergraduate students at UCB, working on a vast variety of building energy and
environment related research and consulting projects. His team is highly productive in publishing
research on various reputed journals.
Dr. Zhai received quite a few awards for his
outstanding research, education and outreach activities, including the
Distinguished Service Award (DSA) of ASHRAE.
If you are interested, you
can find more information about Dr. Zhai's
background, experience, research and teaching interests from the following
links:
v RESUME
v RESEARCH
v
TEACHING