Ursula Eicker is a Professor and Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) for Next-Generation Cities at Concordia University. She is a physicist, having held leadership positions at the Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences and its Centre for Sustainable Energy Technologies. For more than two decades she has led innovative research projects on energy efficiency in buildings and sustainable energy supply systems – work explored in her six books and over 400 publications. Now, at Concordia, she is leading a team of energy planners, designers, philosophers, biologists and building engineers to develop integrated strategies for efficient, creative, and accessible zero-carbon cities.
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Jing Hu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy. By facilitating a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary dialogue between Confucianism and Western ethics, Hu studies moral emotions and virtues like sympathy/empathy, honesty and shame. Her work has appeared in Philosophy Compass, Dao and the Journal of Chinese Philosophy. As part of the CERC team, Hu’s work will look at how city dwellers’ beliefs and attitudes shape their cities. By examining the multitude of emotions and relationships that exist, Hu aims to better understand a city’s unique characteristics. She hopes to develop strategies to educate citizens to embrace a sustainable and resilient future.
Alice Jarry is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Design and Computational Arts, and a member of Kheops (an International research consortium on the governance of large infrastructure projects); Arts Collective Perte-de-Signal; the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology; and Hexagram-Concordia. She specializes in site-specific responsive works, socio-environmental design, and tangible media. Her research examines questions of agency, sustainability, aesthetics, and politics. It bears critically upon material production, and contemporary matters-of-concern regarding communities and infrastructures. Jarry’s work within the CERC team explores ways in which material research can generate responsive and resilient modes of engagement with the built environment.
Chunyan Lai is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a member of the Power Electronics and Energy Research Group at the Gina Cody School. She specializes in transportation electrification and innovative technologies that address the present and future needs of Canadian automotive industry and transit agencies. Her research aims to improve the reliability of electric motors and drives by incorporating intelligent control algorithms to achieve superior vehicle performance and extended driving-range. Lai’s contribution to the CERC team is to predict and measure energy consumption of electrified vehicles, plan the integration of charging stations in the city energy network, and develop novel solutions to address the increased energy demand from E-mobility.
Mohamed Ouf is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering, an associate member of the Centre for Zero Energy Buildings Studies (CZEBS), and the International Energy Agency (IEA) Annex 79. Using different research methods from building engineering, data science, architecture, and behavioural science, he seeks to improve energy efficiency and occupant comfort in buildings. Buildings represent approximately 40% of energy use in cities, and Ouf’s contribution to the CERC team is to emphasize the correlation between occupants and actual buildings’ energy use to make informed designs, plans and predictions for next-generation cities.
Carly Ziter is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology, a research member of the Quebec Centre for Biodiversity Science, and a fellow of the Faculty of Arts and Science’s Loyola Sustainability Research Centre and Science College. She researches the provision of ecosystem services (the benefits people get from nature) in urban areas using field observation and experiments, advanced sensor data, and synthesis approaches. Her contribution to the CERC team is to highlight the essential role of urban green space and biodiversity in creating a next-generation city. Her work finds nature-based solutions to ensure the health and wellbeing of urban residents.