Two Faculty Awarded UT Energy Institute Interdisciplinary Research Grants

Two School of Architecture faculty members have been awarded funding through a new university-wide research effort coordinated by The University of Texas at Austin Energy Institute. Organized around the core theme “Fueling a Sustainable Energy Transition,” the initiative sought to identify and support the most promising cross-campus interdisciplinary research related to the ongoing global energy transition.

Eleven teams, comprised of 53 faculty and researchers from nine schools across the university, were selected for the research grant through a campus-wide competition. Of the projects selected for funding, two are co-led by faculty within the School of Architecture – a testament to the important role our disciplines play in tackling some of the most difficulty energy challenges communities face today. The School of Architecture-led projects include:

“Decarbonizing the City – Financing and Policy Solutions for Transportation”
Community & Regional Planning Assistant Professor Gian-Claudia Sciara partnered with LBJ School of Public Affairs Assistant Professor Andrew Waxman to co-lead a project exploring the energy transition in transportation. Combining their shared interest in transportation finance, policy, and decision-making, and their complementary perspectives as a planner and an economist, their research will explore lawmakers’ knowledge of and opinions about the legislative opportunities available to facilitate the energy transition in transportation, and to minimize the impacts of that transition on transportation funding. Through the administration of select focus groups and a national survey, they will look at how state lawmakers perceive the costs and benefits of potential legislative opportunities, and how they understand the larger policy subsystem important for legislative action in this domain
 
Other Team Members include: Michael Walton (Cockrell School of Engineering), Joshua Blank, Jim Henson, and Bryan Jones (College of Liberal Arts),

“Smart Decarbonization of the Built Environment in the Nexus of Climate Change, Population Growth and Technology Adoption”
For their project, Architecture and Community & Regional Planning Assistant Professor Juliana Felkner and Cockrell School of Engineering Assistant Professor Zoltan Nagy will develop a simulation framework for urban energy demand and intelligent energy management that incorporates climate change, urban form, and land-use planning. Building upon recent work completed by the co-leads, which simulated projected energy demand in West Campus, their project aims to expand the integrated agent-based simulation framework they developed to study future scenarios based on urban energy demand under the influence of climate change; urban form and land use planning; policy changes related to new technology adoption; and algorithms for intelligent energy management.

Other Team Members include: Peter Stone (College of Natural Sciences) and Ariane Beck (LBJ School of Public Affairs)

For more information about the Energy Institute and the other projects selected for funding through the “Fueling a Sustainable Energy Transition” initiative, visit: https://energy.utexas.edu/news/Energy-Institute-CFP-FSET-announcement-new-UT-collaborations



Photo credit: Robert Stepnoski