2018 Research Prize
Natural Light and Health in Urban Environments

Wayne Place
North Carolina State University
School of Architecture

Jianxin Hu
North Carolina State University
School of Architecture

Traci Rider
North Carolina State University
School of Architecture

Mohammad Salamati
North Carolina State University
School of Architecture

Masoome Haghani
North Carolina State University
School of Architecture

Pegah Mathur
North Carolina State University
School of Architecture

Rosa McDonald
North Carolina State University
School of Architecture

Daoru Wang
North Carolina State University
School of Architecture

Mack Carter
North Carolina State University
School of Architecture

Thomas Place
North Carolina State University
School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering

received his Master of Architecture from North Carolina State University (NCSU) and his PhD in physics from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His areas of focus include architectural structures, passive solar technologies, and daylighting. He was essential in helping the NCSU College of Design develop a research-focused culture, with inquiry guided by the needs of humans through the development of sustainable, material-driven, large-scale designs; he was also instrumental in the creation of the college's PhD program. Place has been a consultant on more than twenty building projects, conducting daylighting design and analysis, structural design and analysis, and system integration. He is a registered professional engineer in California and North Carolina and holds numerous professional memberships, including those in the Society of Building Science Educators, American Solar Energy Society, American Institute of Architects Associate, and the American Society of Civil Engineers, among others. Place has been awarded the NCSU Outstanding Extension Service Award, Outstanding Teacher Award, Outstanding Research Award, the Alexander Quarles Holliday Medal for Excellence (the highest award for NCSU Faculty members), and has been named an Alumni Association Distinguished Professor and a James and Ann Goodnight Distinguished Professor.

is an associate professor of architecture at North Carolina State University. He received his PhD in Design from North Carolina State University and Master of Architecture degree from Tianjin University School of Architecture. He is a professional architect in the states of North Carolina and Maryland, is LEED-Certified, and was a lead architect for six years with Ayres Saint Gross designing health care facilities and academic campus buildings. His roles in creating and operating the Rotating Daylighting Lab include: design of the spatial configuration options; design of the envelope and infill structure; design of the electrical system and the thermal system; extensive oversight and participation in construction; extensive electrochromic glazing research; chair and research advisor for PhD candidate Sepide Saiedlue; member of the PhD advisory committees for Mohammad Salamati, Pegah Mathur, Masoome Haghani, Rosa McDonald, and Daoru Wang; and manager of instrumentation at the North Carolina State University Daylighting Facility. He has published the book Building Environmental Control Systems Illustrated and many peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers. He has taught Architecture Technology studios at many levels, the Comprehensive studio in the Master of Architecture program, a graduate seminar on daylighting system design, and Environmental Control Systems (ECS) for buildings.

is an associate professor of architecture at North Carolina State University. She received her PhD in Design from North Carolina State University, her Master of Human-Environment Relations degree from Cornell University, and her Bachelor in Architecture from the University of Cincinnati. She is accredited in both LEED and WELL Standards and was the first LEED AP in the HOK-Houston office when she was a practitioner. Her roles in creating and operating the RDL focused on the exploration of daylight on human health, including visual comfort, productivity, and user behavior and preference. She serves as committee member for PhD candidates Pegah Mathur, Masoome Haghani, Rosa McDonald, and Daoru Wang. She has over twenty-five years of practice and consulting experience, largely focusing on sustainability. In 2021, she published three books: Building for Health and Well-Being: Exploring Health-Focused Rating Systems for Design and Construction Professionals, Understanding Green Building Materials, and Understanding Green Building Guidelines. She regularly publishes peer-review journal articles and presents at practice-oriented conferences. Her courses in the School of Architecture focus on sustainability, both as is seen in standard practice and in how practice should shift to address grand challenges. She also teaches the fundamental research theory and methods courses for the College of Design's two doctoral programs.

received his PhD in Design from North Carolina State University in 2022. He also received his Master of Energy and Bachelor of Architectural Engineering from the University of Tehran. His PhD research thesis focused on designing integrated buildings systems and incorporating an innovative skylight technology to improve the occupants' visual and thermal comfort, which was carried out under the supervision of Dr. Place and in collaboration with Fentress Architects. Salamati owns a patent for a new design of thermochromic smart glazing for the application of high-performance window systems in buildings. He published various scientific articles in reputable venues, including Building and Construction Materials, Building and Environment, ASHRAE SimBuild 2022, and ASHRAE Building Conference 2019. As complementary services, Salamati has worked as a committee member for CBE Industry Advisory Board 2022 and a scientific reviewer for Springer journals, Elsevier journals, and ASHRAE conferences. Currently, he is working as a senior sustainability engineer at Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, where he focuses on high-performance building design, energy optimizations, and net zero carbon buildings.

is a candidate in the PhD in Design Program at North Carolina State University, working on an innovative daylighting system, which improves building thermal performance and enhances occupant experience in buildings. Haghani's research topic is "User-Centric Daylighting System Design: Optical Vertical Louver (OVL) System." Her research is based on a mixed-method approach, which includes computational simulation, physical experiments, and user experience. She is interested in working as a design researcher in interdisciplinary teams to provide a sustainable and comfortable space for users who spend a considerable amount of time indoors. She has more than nine years of experience working in collaborative teams in which she designed and conducted sustainability and user-centric research in both academic and industry environments.

is a PhD candidate in Design at North Carolina State University with a Master of Science in Environmental Building Design from the University of Pennsylvania and a Master of Architecture from the University of Sheffield. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on the analysis of human-centric environmental factors, including daylighting, that impact human health and play a crucial role in health metrics including alertness and sleep quality, as well as alleviating some neurodegenerative disease symptoms such as Alzheimer's. In her research, she combines computational design, sustainable technology, and building science with medical outcomes in order to design a human-centered responsive environment, paving the way toward both preventive and therapeutic solutions in health, sustainability, and well-being. During her PhD, she applied various research methods for daylighting design and assessment, including computational simulations and physical experiments. She is investigating the innovative design and analysis of daylighting systems as integrative prototypes that address the problem of dehumanized dense urban environments. While developing innovative simulation methods for incorporating building design and biological models, experimental research is an integral part of her work in daylighting design. She has created automated tools using HDR photography to test daylighting systems in physical experimental settings, validating simulated outcomes for scaling design prototypes.

is an assistant professor in the School of Architecture at North Carolina State University. Before joining the faculty in 2022 she taught in the interdisciplinary and architecture first-year studios for five years and served as a teaching assistant in other graduate and PhD courses with subjects including tectonics, energy analysis, and research paradigms. She has also been a regular guest reviewer for the advanced architecture airport studio. McDonald's scholarly interests began with a focus on sustainability and traditional energy efficiency measures in architecture through daylighting, shading systems, and energy modeling technologies. Her research interests have expanded to include the investigation of how leveraging the ecological and biophilic benefits of daylight and vegetation can foster opportunities for green living systems as integral parts of our built environment. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Design at NC State University in Design for Sustainability, Health and Well-Being, and Technology. While her PhD research compares conventional static shading techniques to vegetative shading in offices, future research will expand this to explore vegetative shading in different building typologies, species of vegetation most suitable for this application, optimal vegetative configurations for shading, and various quantitative and qualitative methodologies to measure this phenomenon.

is a PhD student at North Carolina State University. He received his master's degree in Architecture from Yale School of Architecture, where he focused on exploring the connections between machine learning and energy simulation within the building industry. He received his bachelor's degree in Architecture from North Carolina State University. Under the supervision of Dr. Wayne Place, Wang's current research is focused on using machine learning and deep learning methods to expand access to daylight illumination knowledge during the building design phase. Wang did extensive work with Mack Carter in the construction of the Rotating Daylighting Lab. During that process, he gained a tremendous amount of experience and knowledge regarding the construction industry, which has helped prepare him to become a more knowledgeable designer and experienced instructor in the architecture field. The Rotating Daylighting Lab provides him and his colleagues with opportunities to conduct the experiments to verify their hypotheses. Specifically for his daylight simulation research via machine learning and deep learning, the Rotating Daylighting Lab is the perfect environment in which to generate the experimental data to verify the predictions from both his climate-based daylight modeling and deep learning methods.

is a Master of Architecture candidate at North Carolina State University. He is the primary contributor to all construction facets of the Rotating Daylighting Lab, including welding the steel frame, wood framing, framing around the windows and skylight, installing the electrical system (including the commutator, which provides continuous power to the Lab even while it is rotating), installing the heating and cooling system, fabricating and installing the wheel mounts, and adjusting the wheels to float above the concrete under uniform gravity load and activate/stabilize the Lab under asymmetric loads. He has over sixteen years of experience as a civil engineering and facilities maintenance technician with the United State Air Force, including MIG and stick welding, oxi-plasma cutting of various metals, sheet metal fabrication, brick and block masonry, roll up doors, demolition and clean up, forklift and boom lift operator, asbestos/lead removal, construction site surveyor, earthwork excavation, concrete formwork and casting, framing/dry wall, door/window installation and repair, roofing, fire suppression installation/repair, painting, carpentry, locks, sign fabrication, and customer service. He has basic facilities experience with heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC), electrical, and plumbing.

is co-owner and lead electrical engineer for Outbound Lighting, LLC. He holds a Bachelor of Electro-Mechanical Engineering and a Master of Mechanical Engineering from North Carolina State University with research in utilizing shape memory alloy NiTi wire as actuator-sensors in additively manufactured structures. Working at Cree, one of the world's leading LED manufacturers, Place was department head for the Package & Test R&D team of sixty scientists, engineers, and technicians responsible for all new LED chip product introduction before leading the Global Applications Engineering Team, working with industry leaders such as GE, Panasonic, and Acuity. Over seven years, he was awarded multiple independent patents for LED chip design, which were crucial in yielding the then-record for luminous efficacy of a high-power broadband white light source of 303 lumens-per-watt. Additionally, Place has twenty years of personal and professional experience in TIG, MIG, and stick welding, sheet metal fabrication, machining, woodworking, and additive manufacturing. He designed and fabricated the electrical commutator for the Rotating Daylighting Lab with a multibrush design to reduce electrical noise for the power distribution lines to the entire building without interruption and consulted on the design for the motor-drive system to rotate the building.