Professor earns prestigious award from elite engineering group

For outstanding achievements in service and teaching, Charles Culp, a professor of architecture at Texas A&M University, recently received the prestigious E.K. Campbell Award of Merit from the Life Members Club of the [American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers] (https://www.ashrae.org/) .

The award, which includes a $10,000 honorarium, medallion and plaque, was presented at the January 2015 ASHRAE conference in Chicago.

A member of the ASHRAE [College of Fellows] (https://www.ashrae.org/society-groups/college-of-fellows) and a [life member] (https://www.ashrae.org/society-groups/life-members-club) , Culp is serving a three-year term on ASHRAE’s board of directors through July 1, 2015.

Since joining the Department of [Architecture] (http://dept.arch.tamu.edu/) faculty in 1999, he’s taught high-performance building design and simulation, environmental design, and heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems classes that are popular with both design and engineering students.

A licensed engineer and holder of numerous U.S. patents, Culp has more than 40 years of academic and professional experience in engineering, research, teaching and management to pass along to the design and engineering students who take his classes.

Culp also serves as associate director of Texas A&M’s [Energy Systems Laboratory] (http://esl.tamu.edu/) , implementing its [Continuous Commissioning] (http://one.arch.tamu.edu/news/2013/4/23/culp-continuous-commissioning/) tools that help provide a building’s energy “tune-up.”

The CC process, which typically results in a 20-percent reduction in a building’s energy use, has yielded more than $100 million in [energy savings] (http://archcomm.arch.tamu.edu/archive/news/spring2008/stories/energySavers.html) since its inception in 1995. Culp also led the team that developed the CC diagnostic software.

In addition to his CC duties at the ESL, he has conducted more than $14 million of externally funded lab research in low-energy use commercial and residential building design, software control algorithms, energy studies, low-velocity air movement studies, air movement in ducts, measurement and verification technology, advanced gaming technology and building energy codes.

Before joining the Texas A&M faculty, Culp was a senior engineer at Honeywell for 17 years, where he led the development of two major energy management control system designs.

He earned a Ph.D. in Solid State Physics with an Electrical Engineering minor from Iowa State University and a Bachelor of Science in Physics with highest honors from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.

Culp holds a has a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design – Accredited Professional certification from the U.S. Green Building Council and a High Performance Building Design Professional certification from ASHRAE.