Speaker Details

Dr. Tarek Rakha

Associate Professor, Director, High Performance Building Lab, Georgia Tech School of Architecture

Country: Egypt

Biography:

Tarek Rakha is a researcher, educator, and entrepreneur who integrates building design technology and environmental sustainability with the needs of underserved communities. He is Associate Professor of Architecture and Director of the High Performance Building Lab (HPBL) at Georgia Tech, and Co-founder and CEO of Lamarr.AI, a startup that commercializes technology developed through his funded academic research. Tarek is an architect by training, and before joining Georgia Tech in 2019 he was Assistant Professor at Syracuse University, after earning a Ph.D. in Building Technology from MIT in 2015.

Tarek develops novel areas of scholarship focusing on aerial data and robotics for building envelope diagnostics using computer-vision drones, urban energy sensing and computational informatics, as well as heat vulnerability and outdoor thermal comfort modeling at the building and neighborhood scales. His research received support worth over $4M (total project volume ~$7M) from federal agencies such as the US DOE, ARPA-E, and the NSF. His work was also funded by state authorities such as NYSERDA and both NYSDOT and GDOT, philanthropies such as the Sloan Foundation, as well as corporate sponsors including the Coca-Cola Company. He has published his work as author and co-author in more than 70 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers and two have won best paper awards in conferences. He was recently nationally recognized by the Emerging Contributor Award from IBPSA-USA.

As an educator, Tarek connects design, technology, and climate change-centered studios and courses with social justice and the needs of marginalized communities. He was awarded the Georgia Tech Student Recognition of Excellence in Teaching: Class of 1934 Award based on exceptional student evaluation surveys. In 2022, He mentored the DOE’s Solar Decathlon Design Challenge Residential Division Grand Winner team. The team also took home first place in the contest's new Retrofit Housing division. In addition, student groups in his co-taught design studio competed against 400+ submissions in the AIA and ACSA’s 2019 International Design Competition: Here+Now, and won 1st Place and an Honorable Mention (2/6 awards). Furthermore, he coalesces service with his scholarship. He was invited to the Symposium on Simulation for Architecture and Urban Design’s board (SimAUD), and co-edited two conference proceedings as the 2018 General Chair in TU Delft and as the 2019 Program Chair and host of the 10-year anniversary at Georgia Tech.

Status: Confirmed