Student Spotlight: Marzieh Jafary [2016 IEEE Annual Green Technologies Conference]

July 07, 2016 | posted by The Institute

Graduate Research Assistant Marzieh Jafary shares her experience at the 2016 IEEE Annual Green Technologies Conference.

“The IEEE Green Technologies Conference (GreenTech) was conceived to address one of the most pressing challenges of our time: securing green and clean energy sources for the 21st century to protect the environment and help build a more resilient power grid.”

Adam Stensland, GreenTech 2016 Conference Chair

When and where did this take place?

Kansas City, Missouri. April 7th and 8th, 2016

What was your role during the event?

I presented a paper titled: “Understanding Campus Energy Consumption; People, Building, and Technology”.  Colleges and universities in the U.S. spend an average of $1.10 per square foot (ft2) on electricity and 18¢/ft2on natural gas annually. This study utilizes five years of data enlisting a campus as a test bed to understand the interactions of people, buildings and technology on energy consumption and to explore how to reduce peak energy use to reduce costs and benefit the community. One simple approach toward this goal would be to set the thermostat to a number higher than 65 degree Fahrenheit to save energy.

Why was this innovative?

The importance of presenting in this conference is to show the professional community who you are and what are the problems that you are concerned with. Through the discourse and interactions at this conference, we as students and professionals hope to find solutions to real world problems.

How can your new knowledge be applied to your professional career?

Having insights from professionals in the field will help me to improve my research toward finding better solutions. Through this opportunity I was able to meet professionals in different sectors such as utility, governmental organization, privet firms, urban planners, and architects who are concerned to have a sustainable city from their point of view and expertise. It opened my eyes to better understand that achieving the final goal of having sustainable cities and communities can not be achieved by only specific groups; it needs cooperation from each sector and requires a full understanding of each sector's capabilities and needs. It also reassured my interest in my field, building energy efficiency.