Call for Papers

Please contact the symposium organizers with questions.

In developed countries, buildings consume approximately 40% of the total primary energy, resulting from the essential need for the human body thermal comfort. The symposium will focus on the materials innovation in optical and thermal science for building energy efficiency as well as occupants’ thermoregulation, aiming to gather materials scientists, physicists, chemists, and thermal and civil engineers to share the research progress and vision for mitigating the energy consumption and carbon emissions associated with building sectors. The symposium will focus on materials innovation in synthesis, characterization, measurement, and computation that can lead to better harvesting and utilization of renewable energy resources and lower building energy consumption. Topics will include but not limited to chromic materials, solar heating, radiative cooling, caloric materials, materials for non-vapor compression refrigeration and heat pumps, low global warming potential refrigerants, phase change materials, thermal storage, thermal switches, thermal insulators/sealants, and wearable personal thermoregulation. To facilitate the integration of research lab-scale fundamental materials science and building-scale implementation, the symposium also welcomes relevant research in life cycle assessment (LCA) and techno-economic assessment (TEA), which are critical for scalable and impactful energy sustainability research.

Topics will include:

• Chromic materials
• Solar heating and radiative cooling
• Thermal insulators and advanced sealants
• Thermal storage
• Thermal switch
• Caloric materials
• Thermogalvanic cells
• Materials for non-vapor compression refrigeration and heat pump
• Wearable thermoregulation materials
• Novel characterizations of materials’ thermal and optical properties
• Life cycle assessment and techno-economic assessment

• A tutorial complementing this symposium is tentatively planned.

Invited Speakers (tentative):

• Nastaran Barhemmati (Viking Cold Solutions Inc., USA)
• Chuck Booten (National Renewable Energy Laboratory, USA)
• Yanfeng Gao (Shanghai University, China)
• Kyle R Gluesenkamp (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA)
• Lin Vivien Lu (Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China)
• Zhengmao Lu (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA)
• Arun Majumdar (Stanford University, USA)
• Michael McGehee (University of Colorado Boulder, USA)
• Delia Milliron (The University of Texas at Austin, USA)
• Hong Chul Moon (University of Seoul, Republic of Korea)
• Sven Mumme (Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, USA)
• Hidefumi Odaka (AGC Glass Asia Pacific, Japan)
• Qibing Pei (University of California, Los Angeles, USA)
• Ravi Prasher (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA)
• Junsuk Rho (Pohang University of Science and Technology, Republic of Korea)
• Gang Tan (Zhejiang University, China)
• Junqiao Wu (University of California, Berkeley, USA)
• Ronggui Yang (Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China)
• Shu Yang (University of Pennsylvania, USA)
• Jia Zhu (Nanjing University, China)

Symposium Organizers