Bryan Urban is a Senior Member of Technical Staff for the Building Energy Systems Group, where he leads projects to validate the energy-saving capabilities of innovative building technologies. His focus is on field testing and analysis to help companies demonstrate their new products to end-users, utilities, and investors. Bryan’s projects have helped companies of all sizes spanning a range of building technology categories including smart thermostats, consumer electronics, advanced thermal insulation, and remote building assessment tools.
Bryan’s personal research interests lie at the intersection of energy technology and human behavior. In particular, identifying and exploiting ways to make buildings more efficient while improving thermal comfort and occupant satisfaction. A new generation of connected devices brings exciting new opportunities for energy savings through intelligent automation. When new products are developed, they often perform differently than expected. Our scientific field testing and monitoring projects help our clients uncover and resolve unanticipated issues, and our technical support helps companies independently validate the technical merit of their novel approaches.
With more than a decade of expertise in the areas of building science, whole building energy simulation, and remote sensor deployments, Bryan specializes in stochastic and parametric building energy simulation of human behavior, accurate in-situ thermal and energy measurement, and independent fact-based analysis to support energy policymaking. Before joining Fraunhofer CSE in 2008, Bryan worked with the MIT Building Technology Department developing an advanced simulation tool that enables architects to predict the energy and thermal performance of early-stage building concepts. Bryan obtained his MS in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and his BS from Cornell University, and resides in Cambridge, MA.
