Professor Hua Ge

Dr. Hua Ge is Professor of Building Engineering at Concordia and a Tier II CURC in High Performance Building Envelope for Climate Resilient Buildings. Her expertise relates to the building envelope and its performance characteristics including large-scale lab and field testing and modeling of hygrothermal performance of building envelopes, wind-driven rain loads on building façades, and energy efficient and durable housing for the Canadian North. Her current research focuses on the effect of climate change on whole building performance, i.e. thermal, energy, durability and indoor environment, and developing innovative, energy positive and climate resilient building envelope solutions for carbon neutral buildings under future climates.  She has participated as theme leader in several NSERC Strategic Networks on durability and energy efficiency and serves on several technical committees (e.g. ASHRAE TC 4.4, CSA S478 “Durability in Buildings”, CIB TG 97 “Nature-based Solutions for Climate Resilient Buildings and Communities''). She led a $1.3 M Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) project   – the Future Building Lab (FBL), a world-class outdoor research facility that advances innovative building technologies and integration of renewables for net-zero energy buildings.

Dr. Marzieh Riahinezhad

Dr. Marzieh Riahinezhad, PEng, PMP, is an Associate research officer at the Construction Research Centre at National Research Council of Canada (NRC). Her main research focuses on the development of sustainable building envelope materials, their performance and durability assessment, and service life prediction. She is also the lead for Resilient Residential Retrofit theme under Climate Resilient Built Environment Initiative at NRC and leads the National Building Code of Canada R&D theme on Durability and Resilience. Marzieh is an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Ottawa, where she co-supervises graduate students and lectures. Marzieh is the recipient of numerous awards including the international “Best Dissertation of the Year ADIPEC Award” in excellence in energy (2015), University of Waterloo Chemical Engineering Medal for Proficiency in Research (2016), the Value for Canada Award from NRC (2019), the Outstanding Achievement Awards, NRC President’s Award for Protecting Canadians (2021), and Construction Research Centre’s Director General Innovation Award (2022). She is a member at International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction CIB W080, ASTM Committee G03 on weathering and durability, and IIBEC.

Dr. Michael Lacasse

Dr. Lacasse is a Senior Research Officer and Team leader of Facade Systems and Products team, forming part of NRCC’s Construction Research Centre. He undertakes both strategic and collaborative research related to building facades and fenestration, is responsible for both maintaining and advancing the team’s research capabilities, developing business opportunities and training and mentoring HQP. Dr. Lacasse is a widely recognized expert in the durability of building materials, building elements, and the moisture management of building enclosures. He has fostered research collaboration with local academia as well as internationally and has played an important role in industry having influenced code and standard development in respect to resistance to deterioration of building assemblies, where his work has helped develop both CSA and ISO standards on durability. He is a board member of the CIB (International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction) , and Co-chair of CIB W080 (Prediction of Service Life of Building Materials and Components) and also chairs the ISO TC59 SC14 on the Design Life of Built Assets. He has participated in DBMC’s since 1996 (7DBMC / Stockholm), chaired the 8DBMC (Vancouver / 1999) and has participated as DBMC steering committee chair, and as well for several DBMC’s over the past 25 years, Scientific committee chair and steering committee member.

Professor Leon Wang

Dr. Wang is Associate Director of the Centre for Zero Energy Building Studies (CZEBS) and have led multiple large-scale projects with Canada federal and provincial grants focusing on urban climate and sustainability with the focus on studying the impacts of the climate change, such as Advancing Climate Change Science in Canada, and Canada Foundation of Innovation, contributing to international codes/standards and guidelines, such as IECC, ASHRAE, and REHVA. His research also contributed to the mitigation of urban heat island and COVID-19 impacts in Canada and were widely covered by the media. He has organized large international conferences and workshops and led multi-disciplinary projects, collaborating with many governments and research institutes, including National Research Council Canada (NRC), Health Canada, and Environment and Climate Change Canada. Dr. Wang is also leading the NRC collaboration in the recent Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF) project “Electrifying Society – Towards Decarbonized Resilient Communities”.