Teaching energy modeling basics (or, as I'd rather rename the course "how confidently kick the tires of your consultant's energy model to achieve great design") to my favorite crowd, the practicing architect, at the UPenn's Weitzman School of Design Professional Program.

Alejandra is a Principal at Airlit Studio, an environmental design consulting practice with a design-minded approach rooted in technical excellence. Alejandra combines expertise in mechanical engineering and building science to give clients a clear understanding of the impact design strategies and innovative solutions have on long-term building performance. Alejandra leverages research and simulations to provide project teams with sustainable design knowledge and energy expertise. With a Ph.D. in natural ventilation, she is experienced in designing passive buildings. In addition to her interest in passive solutions, Alejandra also has extensive experience with energy-intensive buildings such as laboratories and healthcare facilities having worked as an in-house building scientist at Payette for four years. Her experience also includes a focus on the power of early design analytics, gained during her tenure as a consultant at Thornton Tomasetti, where she built their Boston-based sustainability group. Lastly, Alejandra’s expertise also includes thermal comfort, energy modeling, daylighting, and computational fluid dynamics.Ale is passionate about early design building science: assisting design teams with analytics and reports that impact design outcomes. She is a co-founder of Project StaSIO, a community of building performance simulators (consultants, architects, in-house building scientists) that strives to teach others how to ask the right building analytics questions and convey the results in ways that are beautiful and impactful.Highly committed to growing the next generation of sustainability-focused designers and engineers, Ale loves teaching. She has lectured at MIT and the Harvard GSD, where she’s had the good fortune to mentor several brilliant students who have become inspiring disruptors in the building simulation industry.

Leading Thornton Tomasetti's sustainability practice for the Boston office.

As a building scientist, my role was to inform the design of Payette's projects, particularly during early stages, from an energy performance and overall sustainability perspective. The Amherst Science Center was one of my favorite projects. I also led the internal research efforts, including the development of the Glazing and Winter Comfort Tool.

Lecturing the course Natural Ventilation.

Co-teaching of graduate course Energy and Building Design in the Department of Architecture.

Performed quality assurance in all technical reports generated by the company, reviewed consistency in energy simulation results and ensured an appropriate communication of the simulation outcomes and recommendations to the client.Performed natural ventilation & passive cooling performance simulations, and generated corresponding reports for projects in early design stages, using airflow network tools, hand heat transfer calculations and computational fluid dynamics (CFD).Managed the operations of the company's Boston office, establishing first contact with potential clients.

Specialized in the field of natural ventilation, proposing a physical model to predict the thermal stratification of air in naturally ventilated rooms.Improved the accuracy of simulation software CoolVent (software developed by MIT to assist architects in designing naturally ventilated buildings).Became a CFD expert in the meantime.

Reviewed and proposed design improvements of the natural ventilation system of 2 mid-height buildings then to-be-built in Tokyo, Japan, in collaboration with architects and engineers at Nikken Sekkei Ltd., Taisei Co., and Takenaka Co.Evaluated of the natural ventilation potential for the buildings and recommended design changes to maximize occupant thermal comfort and minimize cooling energy consumption.Work done along with two other experts from MIT.

Collaboration with students and faculty from the MIT Portugal Program, from IST Lisbon, FEUP, University of Coimbra.

Investigation into predicting an astronaut's performance to operate a robotic arm using spatial ability tests.