Leadership
Ali Malkawi, Founding Director »
Ali Malkawi is a professor of architectural technology at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and an international scholar and expert in building simulation, energy conservation, and sustainability in buildings. He teaches architectural technology and computation and conducts research in the areas of computational simulation, building performance evaluation, and design decision support.
Malkawi is engaged in many large-scale research initiatives and is the recipient of several prestigious and extensive grants. He has lectured and conducted research at numerous universities, conferences, and public events. Previously he has taught at the Georgia Institute of Technology (1991—1994), the University of Michigan (1994–2001), and the University of Pennsylvania (2001–2013), where he was a professor of architecture, the chairman of the graduate group in architecture, and the founder and director of the TC Chan Center for Building Simulation and Energy Studies. He also held the Velux visiting professorship at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen from 2013–2014.
Malkawi serves as a consultant on many high-profile projects, including airport designs, super towers (LOTTE, Seoul; World Trade Center, NY), industrial factories (Ferrari factory, Italy), cities (King Abdulla Atomic and Renewable City, Riyadh), and commercial and residential showcase projects. He provided strategic guidance on building energy-related topics to senior members of the Obama Administration, including the vice president. He also innovates and
leads efforts in sustainability framework developments and engages with energy policies in several countries, including leading the development of the first performance-based sustainability rating system in the Middle East for the State of Qatar.
Lead author or coauthor of over 100 scientific papers, Malkawi is also the coeditor of two books on the subject of computationally-driven design and simulation: Advanced Building Simulation and Performative Architecture: Beyond Instrumentality. He serves as a board member and scientific reviewer for many leading journals, conferences and research centers, and is the associate editor of Building Simulation: An International Journal, distributed by Springer Publishing.
Malkawi received his BS in architectural engineering and environmental design from Jordan University of Science and Technology in 1989, his MArch from the University of Colorado in 1990, his PhD from Georgia Institute of Technology in architectural technology/artificial intelligence in 1994, and an honorary master of arts degree from Harvard University in 2013.
Richard Freeman, Co-Director »
Richard B. Freeman holds the Herbert Ascherman Chair in Economics at Harvard University. He is currently serving as the faculty co-director of the Labor and Worklife Program at the Harvard Law School and is affiliated faculty at the Center of Mathematical Science and Applications; he is also a senior research fellow in Labor Markets at the London School of Economics’ Centre for Economic Performance. He also directs the Science and Engineering Workforce Project at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Professor Freeman is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science and the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and is serving on the AAAS Initiative for Science and Technology. He has served, or is serving on, twelve panels and boards of the US National Academy of Science, including the NAS Panel to Evaluate the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics Approach to Measuring the Science and Engineering Workforce, the Board of Higher Education and Workforce (BHEW), the Committee on Understanding the Engineering Education-Workforce Continuum (NAE), the Committee on Assuring a Future US-based Nuclear Chemistry Expertise, the Committee on National Statistics Panel on Developing Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators for the Future, the Committee on Capitalizing on the Diversity of the Science and Engineering Workforce in Industry, the Committee on National Needs for Biomedical and Behavioral Scientists, the Committee on Demographic and Economic Impacts of Immigration, and the joint NAS, NAE and IM study on Policy Implications of International Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Scholars in the United States.
Freeman received the Mincer Lifetime Achievement Prize from the Society of Labor Economics in 2006. In 2007, he was awarded the IZA Prize in Labor Economics. In 2011, he was appointed Frances Perkins Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. In 2016, he received the Global Equity Organization (GEO) Judges Award, honoring exceptional contribution toward the promotion of global employee share ownership. Also in 2016, he was named a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association; the award citation describes Richard as “an enormously innovative labor economist who has made pioneering contributions to virtually every aspect of the field.”
His recent publications include: Can Labor Standards Improve Under Globalization (2004), Emerging Labor Market Institutions for the 21st Century (2005), America Works: The Exceptional Labor Market (2007), What Workers Want (2nd ed., 2007), What Workers Say: Employee Voice in the Anglo-American World (2007), International Differences in the Business Practices & Productivity of Firms (2009), Science and Engineering Careers in the United States (2009), Reforming the Welfare State: Recovery and Beyond in Sweden (2010), Shared Capitalism at Work: Employee Ownership, Profit and Gain Sharing, and Broad-Based Stock Options (2010), The Citizen’s Share: Putting Ownership Back Into Democracy (2013), and US Engineering in the Global Economy (forthcoming 2017).