Our Mission

The Sustainable Buildings and Societies Laboratory (SBS Lab) aims to become a world-class research and education center for smart, sustainable and resilient cities. To achieve this vision, we are actively educating future technical leaders, enhancing internal collaboration, elevating partnership with DOE national laboratories, engaging industrial partners, and expanding international collaboration network (5E). This allows us to address big societal problems with multi-scale, multi-disciplinary research via multi-institute collaboration supported by multi-year, multi-million dollar grants (5M).

We are mechanical systems-focused architectural engineering researchers. Through our projects, we have developed extensive international collaboration via the Global Building Network, where Dr. Zuo serves as Associate Director for Research, and domestic collaboration with numerous universities and Department of Energy National Laboratories. Dr. Zuo holds a joint appointment at the Communities and Urban Science Group at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. As part of our research, we contribute to open-source tools for building and community system simulation, including the Modelica Buildings Library, to improve access to high fidelity energy and system models.

We are organizing the 1st International Conference of Net Zero Carbon Built Environment (ZCBE) with University of Nottingham, UK, Technical University of Crete, Greece, and University of Adelaide, Australia. The ZCBE will be held in Nottingham during July 3-5, 2024. For more information about the conference, please visit conference website.

Learn more about the Sustainable Buildings and Societies Laboratory at Penn State University: