School of Engineering Alumni Connection breakfast event is Friday

School of Engineering Alumni Connection breakfast event is Friday

Dr. Lara Greden, research team leader with The Weidt Group, will speak at a breakfast event sponsored by the School of Engineering Alumni Connection (SEAC).

Dr. Lara Greden

Her talk is titled "Design, Reconfigure and Persist: How Energy and Financial Analysis Support Flexible Sustainable Buildings.

The event will be held from 7 to 8:30 a.m. Friday, April 11, in the lower level of the Binz Refectory, located on the south campus between Cretin Avenue and Mississippi River Boulevard, along Goodrich Avenue.

Free parking is available in Lot O, next to the Binz. Do not park in Lot W; watch the signs – one side is Lot O, the other side is Lot W. (See the campus map for building and parking locations.)

Cost is $10 per person and includes a breakfast buffet and beverages. Cash or check payment is accepted.

To register, e-mail SEAC or call (651) 962-5756.

One of the greater challenges for sustainable buildings is achieving persistent energy and environmental performance throughout the building's evolving lifetime. During the design and planning phase, energy modeling and other simulation techniques provide a quantitative basis for making decisions on an economic basis. LEED certification and other emerging market mechanisms such as white certificates for carbon trading, green leases and smart meters are providing further stimulus for the economic rationale of green buildings.

However, promising energy and water conservation technologies still are slow to be adopted and, even when pegged for implementation, they often fall out later in the construction phase or cease to perform optimally in the operation phase. The inherent inflexibility of many aspects of buildings and their systems contribute largely to performance that does not meet design phase expectations.

This presentation will invite discussion on the topic by tying findings from field verification of new buildings with analysis of the energy and cost benefits of a new reconfigurable technology for a building's electrical and communications infrastructure. The approach to determining the strategic value of this reconfigurable technology draws on energy modeling, real options and finance techniques. This design approach to risk management bridges the language gap among the parties and increases their opportunity for achieving successful long-term operation of a high performance building.

Greden specializes in energy analysis, cost modeling and risk approaches for green design and building investment decisions. She is an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Architecture, University of Minnesota, where she is teaching a graduate class in Energy and Indoor Environmental Quality.

Greden received her Ph.D. in building technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she also completed a master's degree in technology and policy and was a National Science Foundation Fellow, Presidential Fellow, and Martin Fellow for Sustainability. She received her B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Minnesota.

Register for the breakfast talk today: SEAC or (651) 962-5756.