Precourt Center grants 3 research awards

The Precourt Energy Efficiency Center awarded three grants this year to investigate the reduction of energy use in buildings. The grants, worth $400,000 each, were awarded to a Stanford economist and teams in the School of Engineering and the Graduate School of Business.

Mechanical engineering professor Gianluca Iaccarino and civil engineering professor Martin Fischer won the grant for their computer model, which aims to predict energy use in buildings. They plan to test their model in the Yang and Yamazaki Environment and Energy (Y2E2) building, which is designed to be one of the greenest buildings on campus.

Civil engineering professor Raymond Levitt and Erica Plambeck, a professor at the Graduate School of Business, are looking at ways to help the construction industry adopt energy-efficient innovations. Despite the recent increase in energy-saving technologies, few have been used in the building industry.

Matthew Harding, an assistant professor of economics, intends to study how financial incentives can encourage individuals to conserve energy.

–Ivy Nguyen