In this blog post Will Markiewicz tells us about his research placement at Yale University in the Summer of 2024.
This summer I went to Yale University for a research placement. It was a great opportunity to experience a different research environment and gain some perspective on my PhD. My placement project was to assess the utility of live data streams in education buildings, which forms part of my PhD research in assessing the costs and benefits of live data streams in digital twins. I was lucky to have two outstanding supervisors while at Yale: Dr. Vince Wilczynski, and Dr. Julie Dorsey, and I learned a lot from them. Vince was extremely generous to take me on after I reached out to him, and I’m very grateful to Julie and him for guiding me through the project.
At UCL, I have been harvesting and analysing building data for UCL East One Pool Street, and in the initial part of the project, I carried out a study of an existing Yale building, the Becton Engineering Center, to see whether similar improvement opportunities could be found there as in One Pool Street.
A second element of the project was to use an ISO standard to assess energy efficiency improvements that can be achieved using greater levels of data-driven control. The standard used was ISO 52120-1:2021, Energy performance of buildings — Contribution of building automation, controls and building management. This standard is used to classify the level of automation within a building and estimate the energy savings from a baseline state with minimal automated control. I then also applied the assessment to a new campus for the Yale School of Engineering and Applied Science. It was a good opportunity to further test this method, and to work on a significant project for the university that will bring together Yale’s engineering departments and meet the future needs of teaching and research for decades to come. Being involved at such an early stage of the project was especially exciting, as there is so much opportunity to input into the development and make the new campus as good as it can possibly be.
Getting to work on a building in a different culture and climate provided context and an additional case study for my PhD. It also exposed me to a new set of software, including Clockworks Analytics for fault detection and diagnostics, and the Metasys Building Automation System. This has made me aware of new opportunities and challenges for using live data streams in digital twins as it relates to my PhD research.
Working at Yale made for an inspiring academic experience as well, and it was great to explore a new campus. There are plenty of spots worth visiting, including a library where the walls are lit up by sunlight shining through marble panels, and the university’s own art gallery and natural history museum. My base was the Center for Innovation and Design (CEID). It’s Yale’s makerspace, fully equipped with everything you could want to build hardware projects and inventions. It was motivating to work around students and researchers working on their inventions. One day I would see new musical instruments, another it would be sport technologies or medical devices. The CEID is situated on the ground floor of the Becton Engineering Center, which was ideal for me as I could experience the operation of the building as I was studying it.
I already mentioned my fantastic supervisors, to whom I am extremely grateful, and with whom I will continue to work as we are writing a paper based on the work we did on the placement. I was very fortunate to work with so many Yale staff, including people across energy management, capital development, and facilities management teams. Everyone was always quick to help me and had a real interest in working to make the campus as sustainable as possible. It was great to meet other students from Yale and exchange students from other universities, to talk about our research, learn about each other’s PhD programmes, and go on trips together in and around New Haven. Although I was only there for a short time, I made some great friends who I am still in touch with.
This was a fantastic experience, and a great part of my PhD. I’m left with lots of happy memories, new perspectives for my research, and new relationships that I could never have hoped to form if I hadn’t done this research placement. I’m so grateful to everyone at UCL, Yale, Arup, and ERBE for giving me this opportunity.
Will Markiewicz (click for profile)