About

Rahman Azari is an architect, associate professor, and the founding director of the Resource and Energy Efficiency (RE2) Lab within the Department of Architecture at Penn State. He is also a co-funded faculty member at the Institutes of Energy and the Environment. His research focuses on the life cycle environmental impacts of built environments, innovative construction materials for energy production and carbon sequestration, and building energy and carbon efficiency. Azari has contributed to advancing sustainable building practices through his work on energy and environmental life cycle assessment, novel construction materials, and net-zero energy buildings. Prior to his current position, Azari served as an assistant professor and interim director of the architecture doctorate program at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, and as an assistant professor at the University of Texas San Antonio. He holds a Ph.D. in the Built Environment from the University of Washington in Seattle. His research has been widely published in prominent journals, and he has received multiple awards and grants, including the AIA Upjohn Research Grant and recognition as a Researcher to Know by the Illinois Science and Technology Coalition. Azari's work emphasizes sustainable construction technologies and environmental performance, contributing significantly to the field of environmentally conscious architecture and building design.

Research topics

• Simulation
• Environmental science
• Process engineering
• Automotive engineering
• Engineering
• Civil engineering
• Computer Science
• Meteorology
• Waste management
• Environmental engineering
• Electrical engineering
• Inorganic chemistry
• Materials science
• Chemistry
• Biology
• Physical chemistry
• Ecology
• Architectural engineering
• Geography
• Organic chemistry
• Botany

Selected publications

• Data-Driven Outdoor Thermal Comfort Model via Support Vector Regression

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026-01-01

  otherOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Data-Driven Outdoor Thermal Comfort Model via Support Vector Regression

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026-01-01

  otherOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Self-Powered dynamic Façades using thermoelectric generators and phase change materials

  Energy and Buildings · 2026-01-26 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The Investigation of Energy Conversion Potentials of a Building Envelope-Integrated Photovoltaic-Reversible Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (Pv-Rpemfc) Hybrid System in Different Climates

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Review: Enhancing building energy efficiency through the integration of phase change materials (PCMs) and Thermoelectric Generators (TEGs) into the building envelope

  Journal of Building Engineering · 2025-05-13 · 10 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• A calibration chamber framework for low-cost indoor air quality sensor validation

  Building and Environment · 2025-10-11 · 2 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Determinants of U.S. residential energy consumption at national and state levels: Policy implications

  Energy Policy · 2025-03-30 · 7 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Smart Building Skins for Urban Heat Island Mitigation: A Review

  Journal of Architectural Engineering · 2024-08-09 · 4 citations

  reviewSenior author

  The urban heat island (UHI) effect has detrimental impacts on building cooling demand, public and ecological health, and climate change. Because UHIs are caused by the concentration of construction materials that absorb and retain heat, buildings in urban areas present challenges and opportunities to mitigate them. Specifically, innovative building skin solutions, such as those covered with smart materials (SMs) that respond to environmental stimuli with their dynamic time and temperature-dependent behaviors, have significant potential to reduce the UHI effect. This research provides a review of the state-of-the-art applications of SMs in building skins for urban heat island mitigation (UHIM). It highlights the knowledge gaps and opportunities for future research with an extensive literature review and in-depth analysis. This research classifies the application of skin-integrated smart materials (SISMs) for UHIM into five main groups that included thermal, light, air pollution, humidity and ventilation control, and energy generation, and highlights their challenges and prospects.

  PublisherDOI

• Current Developments and Future Directions in Energy-Efficient Buildings from the Perspective of Building Construction Materials and Enclosure Systems

  Buildings · 2024-06-23 · 12 citations

  articleOpen access1st author

  The need to design buildings in compliance with the Paris Agreement goal requirements is urgent, and architects and engineers need to consider energy use and operational and embodied carbon requirements in doing so. Building envelopes will be an important element in the next generation of high-performance buildings and there have been significant advancements in recent years to develop building envelopes that help mitigate the building carbon emissions through energy-conserving low-embodied carbon or carbon-sequestering solutions. The key objective of this article is to present an overview of the state-of-the-art in the field of energy-efficient low-carbon buildings with a focus on envelope systems. This article provides a survey of the literature on energy use and carbon emissions of the United States building stock, presents recent advancements in energy-conserving building envelopes, and highlights reuse–reduce–sequester strategies that mitigate the embodied carbon of buildings. As materials are critical in reducing the energy consumption and carbon emissions of buildings, this paper also presents developments on diverse materials and building envelope solutions that have been effective in creating high-performance buildings, from insulation materials to phase-change materials and aerogels. Finally, the characteristics of a selected number of progressive net-zero-energy guidelines such as Passive House Institute (PHI) standards, Passive House Institute US (Phius) standards, the PowerHouse standard, and the BENG standard are discussed. The findings of this work highlight the increased focus on the design, construction, and engineering strategies that aim to mitigate the carbon emissions of buildings based on a holistic whole-life carbon mitigation approach.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Low-Cost IoT-based Indoor Air Quality Monitoring

  Technology|Architecture + Design · 2024-07-02 · 6 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Ellen B. Gold

  University of California, Davis

  39 shared

• Klea D. Bertakis

  University of California, Davis

  37 shared

• Martha R. Harkey

  University of California, Davis

  33 shared

• Barbara Sternfeld

  Kaiser Permanente

  33 shared

• Shelley R. Adler

  University of California, San Francisco

  33 shared

• Gail A. Greendale

  University of California, Los Angeles

  33 shared

• Yali A. Bair

  Planned Parenthood

  33 shared

• Edward J. Callahan

  University of California, Davis

  25 shared

Education

• PhD in Built Environment, College of Built Environments

  University of Washington

  2013

Awards & honors

• AIA Upjohn Research Grant (2019, 2020)
• Researcher to Know by the Illinois Science and Technology Co…
• COTE Top Ten student awards (2016, 2017)
• Dean’s Outstanding Teaching Award, College of Architecture,…
• President’s Distinguished Achievement Award – Teaching Excel…