Meet our faculty, Dr. Elie Azar

The building sector plays a critical role in the transition toward low-carbon, resilient, and healthy urban communities, and drivers of building performance are becoming ever more complex. Understanding and improving building performance thus increasingly require multidisciplinary perspectives that draw on such domains as engineering, urban planning, health, and behavioural science.

Dr. Elie Azar’s research aims to assess and enhance building performance holistically by studying the interactions of buildings with their users and the urban environment. Using an interdisciplinary approach, his team applies and integrates various research tools and methods, such as building performance simulation, user-focused agent-based modelling, and machine learning algorithms. Dr. Azar’s research also explores the multi-domain drivers of occupant comfort and behaviours through extensive collaborations with researchers from different disciplines.

Dr. Azar has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific articles and three books on sustainability, smart cities, and artificial intelligence. He is currently completing his fourth book on carbon neutrality and the path to net-zero communities and cities. Dr. Azar has been recognized through various awards and distinctions, including a recent selection among the “World’s Top 2% Scientists” in a Stanford University study, multiple best paper awards, and the Government of Dubai’s Emirates Energy Award.

Before joining Carleton University, Dr. Azar was a faculty member at Khalifa University in the United Arab Emirates. He earned his B.Eng. in Mechanical Engineering from Polytechnique Montréal and his MSc. And Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Outside academia, Dr. Azar enjoys basketball, chess, and specialty coffee brewing.