Stars of Our Community: Tianzhen Hong
Posted by jteo on May. 1, 2026 / Member Spotlight / Subscribe 0
Meet our featured member, Tianzhen Hong, a Senior Scientist and Deputy Director for Research of the Building and Industry Energy Systems Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. His research develops and employs interdisciplinary methods and tools to explore technologies, human behavioral dimensions, modeling and simulation, and AI (generative AI, Machine Learning, robotics) supporting the planning, design and operation of energy efficient and demand flexible buildings across scales. He has published more than 250 journal articles on diverse topics of energy and buildings, HVAC, occupants, technologies, and environment. He is a highly cited researcher and the Executive Editor of the Energy and Buildings journal.
How long have you been involved with ASHRAE in years? Describe the roles or capacities in which you are involved with ASHRAE.
I joined ASHRAE in 1996. During the 30 years journey, I participated in multiple technical committees (TC 4.7, TC 7.10), standard committees (SSPC 140, SSPC 205), and multi-disciplinary task groups (MTG.OBB, MTG.GenAI) playing various roles. I established the MTG.OBB (Occupant Behavior in Buildings) in 2016 and chaired the MTG until 2023 when it evolved into TC 7.10. I was the first chair of TC 7.10 until June 2024. Through MTG.OBB and TC 7.10, occupant behavior research was introduced into the ASHRAE society with developed dataset (ASHRAE Global Occupant Behavior Database), modeling and simulation tools, case studies presented in more than 20 ASHRAE seminars, a new chapter 65 on Occupant-centric Sensing and Controls in the HVAC Applications Handbook, and a new section on occupant modeling for Chapter 19 Energy Estimating and Modeling Methods in the Fundamentals Handbook. Leveraging my expertise in building energy modeling, I contributed to TC 4.7, SSPC 140 and 205. I led a new section on multi-scale modeling for Chapter 19 of the Fundamentals Handbook. I am currently the vice chair of the newly established MTG on generative AI which aims to coordinate TC/TG/TRG technical activities to help support the adoption of generative AI by compiling technology adoption resources, best practice development guidelines and undertaking research projects to benefit ASHRAE members and for society operations and members services.
Networking, contribution, sharing and learning
What has been your favorite ASHRAE memory, event, or experience, and why?
My favorite moment was ASHRAE’s approval at the 2016 winter conference to officially establish the MTG on occupant behavior in buildings. A group of international researchers from the IEA EBC Annex 66 (2013-2018), Definition and Simulation of Occupant Behavior in Buildings, formed a solid base for the MTG.OBB to launch activities in the next 8 years. MTG.OBB, for the first time, opens doors to ASHRAE community for exploring and integrating occupant behavior insights into the building and HVAC design, operations, and maintenance, answering essential questions such as building performance gaps, human-building interactions, and efficiency vs sufficiency.
How has your involvement with ASHRAE influenced your career and personal growth?
I see ASHRAE as an essential community to engage with the industry, witnessing the technology development and adoption as well as policy trends, learning from ASHRAE members, sharing our research project outcomes and getting feedback. ASHRAE provides an excellent opportunity for multi-disciplinary research integrating building science, HVACR engineering, human behavioral science, market and regulations which is key to achieving the U.S. energy and societal goals. I have been an active speaker at ASHRAE conferences and built a well-connected network that can be quickly leveraged for collaborative opportunities. I became an ASHRAE Fellow in 2020 and received ASHRAE Distinguished Services Award in 2023.
My involvement with ASHRAE motivated me to participate and contribute to other professional organizations such as IBPSA-USA (I served on the Board of Directors for two terms) and ACEEE where I served as panel co-lead multiple times. I am the co-chair of the 2026 Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings, which will bring together professionals from around the globe to the Asilomar Conference Grounds to share research, spark new ideas and collaborations, and advance the technologies and practices needed to transform the building sector to improve efficiency, affordability, and resiliency.
Do you hold any ASHRAE or other professional certifications/licenses (PE, LEED, WELL, CPHC, etc.)?
I hold California Mechanical PE and was a USGBC LEED AP and AEE CEM. I obtained those when I worked in industry (former Eley Associates, later Architecture Energy Corporation). I don’t need those professional certifications/licenses in my current job as a researcher at LBNL. However, my industry experience enables me to communicate natively with the ASHRAE community and guide my research to support the buildings and HVAC industry. I lead a team at LBNL researching and developing open access building energy simulation tools, e.g., EnergyPlus, CBES (won R&D 100 Award in 2019), CityBES (won R&D 100 Award in 2022), EnergyPlus-MCP, and Occupancy Simulator. My team at LBNL enhanced EnergyPlus with new modeling features and improved usability, driving its adoption for use in California Title 24 code development and compliance.
Where do you see the industry heading in the next 5-10 years, and what developments are you most excited about?
The buildings and HVAC industry are facing challenges to meet new demand of HVAC services (e.g., data centers, manufacturing). Traditional energy efficiency in reducing the amount of energy usage is no longer adequate, as demand flexibility becomes critical to balance dynamic demand and supply for grid stability and reliability, and to reduce demand charges or shift energy use from peak to off-peak periods to reduce energy costs. The buildings sector needs to explore scalable solutions, from individual buildings to a group or portfolio of buildings to the entire building stock of a region, state or the whole country. It is also crucial to integrate the buildings sector with other domains or sectors including transportation, power grid, and urban microclimate so their inter-dependency and interactions can be captured in the holistic system-of-system solutions or strategies.
I am excited about the developments of AI: generative AI, machine learning, and robotics, as AI becomes a power tool or co-pilot in our daily work and life. The AI revolution is enabled with low-cost sensing that generate lots of data, affordable computing that runs AI models and tools for everyone, and power AI models and agentic workflows that make technologies such as digital twins possible to support the optimization of building design, operations and maintenance in real-time informing timely decision making.
What is one key piece of advice you would offer to young professionals entering this field?
"Stay hungry, stay foolish" was the closing advice from Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford commencement speech, popularized as a mantra for lifelong curiosity, ambition, and humility. This is excellently relevant today with rapidly changing new technologies (e.g., AI), emerging opportunities, and multi-facet challenges we are facing as an individual, community, and global society. Learning to learn new things (e.g., LLM, physical AI, agentic workflow) effectively and quickly will be an essential surviving skill for all engineering professionals.
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