PhD Position Indoor Thermal Natural Variation Heat Resilience

How do residents experience changing indoor temperatures? As a PhD candidate at TU Delft, you will combine citizen science, field data and modelling to help develop healthier and more energy-efficien.

Hot weather events are increasing, making adaptation of existing dwellings increasingly important to protect residents from unhealthy indoor conditions and limit future energy use for cooling. While we are instinctively drawn to natural conditions, residents are most of the time exposed to static environmental indoor conditions. Hot weather events can even amplify static conditions, for example through constant mechanical cooling. To support health and to lower energy use, current guidelines and standards allow for some variation.

Yet we still know too little about how residents perceive and accept natural variation in indoor thermal conditions, and how this relates to building characteristics and resident behaviour.

As a PhD candidate at TU Delft, you will conduct research within the NWO-funded Nature 4 Homes project. Your research will address how natural variation in thermal conditions influences residents’ perceptions, acceptance and interactions with the building envelope under current and future Dutch conditions. This a unique opportunity to contribute to one of the most pressing challenges facing cities today: adapting existing dwellings to climate change while enhancing quality of life.

Using a citizen science approach, you will investigate indoor and outdoor thermal and ventilation conditions in existing dwellings in different regions of the Netherlands. You will combine measurements of environmental conditions with information about residents’ perceptions and behaviour and relevant building characteristics. A key part of your research will be developing new methods to characterize natural variation of indoor conditions in relation to outdoor conditions, and predicting this variation using climate scenarios and data collected in dwellings, in co-creation with residents, housing corporations and industy partners.

You will join the Architectural Engineering + Technology (AE&T) Department at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft, under the supervision of Anne Marie Eijkelenboom and Philomena M. Bluyssen and Gert-Jan Steeneveld of the Meteorology and Air Quality Section at Wageningen University and Research. You will collaborate closely with a postdoctoral researcher and three other PhD candidates, as well as research, industry and public-sector partners.

We foster an open and collaborative environment, where independent thinking, knowledge sharing and interdisciplinary research are encouraged.

Job requirements

• You hold an MSc in architecture, architectural engineering, meteorology or atmospheric sciences, environmental sciences, or civil engineering.
• You have a strong interest in human perception, building design, and climate change.
• You are motivated to conduct research with residents in real-world dwellings in the Netherlands.
• You have affinity with modelling and analysing indoor and outdoor environmental conditions.
• You enjoy interdisciplinary research and collaborating with academic, industry and public-sector partners.
• You have excellent oral and written communication skills in English. For more details, please check the Graduate Schools Admission Requirements.
• You have a fascination for science, and love working in an interdisciplinary team.

TU Delft (Delft University of Technology)

For over 180 years, we have been training engineers who make an impact worldwide in companies, government bodies, or as entrepreneurs. Our alumni turn knowledge into concrete solutions for the challenges of today and…