Architecture professor garners TEES Center Fellows award

For significantly improving how building energy efficiency is measured and numerous other achievements, Jeff Haberl, professor of [architecture] (http://dept.arch.tamu.edu/) at Texas A&M, will receive the [Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station] (http://tees.tamu.edu/) ’s Center Fellows Award.

Haberl, who is also associate head for research in the Department of Architecture and associate director of TEES’ [Energy Systems Laboratory] (http://esl.tamu.edu/) , will be honored at TEES’ spring awards banquet, to be held 6 p.m. May 6, 2015 in the Memorial Student Center’s Bethancourt Ballroom.

TEES Center Fellows are chosen for demonstrating superlative initiative and performance while advancing TEES’ research, technology development, and international outreach and collaboration objectives.

Habrel has a storied history as a prolific researcher and inventor. In the mid-1990s, he led a team that developed calculations for determining savings from energy efficiency retrofits of public buildings. Today, these calculations are standard procedures at energy service companies.

Haberl also developed methods enabling the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to measure air pollution reduction that resulted from 2001 codes mandating new residential energy efficiency standards.

“These methods were a fundamental advance in quantifying the relationship between specific building energy efficiency improvements and environmental quality,” said David Claridge, director of the Energy Systems Laboratory.

Haberl’s research group also created methods to quantify the codes’ resulting energy savings — which now exceed $2.3 billion annually — then led an effort to make the methods available [online] (http://ic3.tamu.edu/) .

The methods he helped develop have delivered $3.5 million to Texas A&M in licensing fees. Haberl also holds or co-holds 9 patents and 1 trademark that have stemmed from his research findings.

Since joining the College of Architecture’s faculty in 1995, Habrel has headed research projects totaling $2.7 million in external funding and contributed to research drawing more than $36 million to Texas A&M.

In addition to his research initiatives, Claridge said, Habrel has enhanced the research culture in the College of Architecture, mentoring junior faculty, supporting graduate students and serving as chairman of the Department of Architecture’s Promotion and Tenure Committee.

Among other achievements, Habrel received Distinguished Service Awards from the International Building Performance Simulation Association and the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, where he servers as an [ASHRAE Fellow] (https://www.ashrae.org/society-groups/college-of-fellows) . He has also been nominated for The Association of Former Students’ Faculty Distinguished Service in Research Award.

In addition to enhancing energy conservation savings and measurement, Haberl is interested in heating, ventilation and air conditioning system design, calibrated building energy simulations, solar energy heating and cooling systems and solar energy measurements.