Building Energy and Air-quality Research (BEAR) Lab

I am working as an Associate Professor in the Sustainable Energy Engineering (SEE) Department at IIT Kanpur. I am also serving as an Editor for the Building and Environment journal. Before joining IITK, I served as an Assistant Professor at BITS-Pilani (Pilani campus) from 2017–22. I have also held professional appointments at the University of Surrey, General Electric, and the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).

My undergraduate degree is from IIT Kharagpur in Mechanical Engineering. Subsequently, I earned my PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University in 2014, under Prof. Qingyan Chen's guidance, in the field of indoor air quality. My thesis work was about ozone-initiated chemistry in indoor environments. You can find it here 😀. My current research focuses on improving the energy efficiency and thermal comfort of residential buildings. You can find my research publications on Google Scholar.

Please feel free to email me (aakashrai@iitk.ac.in) for inquiries about prospective research positions in my lab. I try my best to respond to all such queries.