A keynote presentation at Building Simulation 2025 will be delivered by Zoltán Nagy, professor and chair of Building Services at Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands.
Nagy is also founder of the Intelligent Environments Laboratory.
He will present a journey beyond traditional building boundaries in both directions: downward to the occupant dimension rethinking human-building relationships in a changing climate, and upward to urban systems and emission modelling.
His keynote will explore how occupant-centric approaches can improve energy performance while maintaining comfort.
It will also examine how coordinated building portfolios enable substantial demand response, and how bottom-up city-scale modelling can reveal critical climate policy trade-offs invisible at building level.
Nagy brings a unique background in mechanical engineering and robotics to building science. He is a Fellow of IBPSA and recipient of IBPSA-USA’s Outstanding Researcher Award (2022).
Zoltán led the development of CityLearn, an open-source computational platform for benchmarking advanced building control and demand response that has been used by researchers worldwide and recognised as a Digital Public Good by the UN.
As one of the operating agents of IEA EBC Annex 95 and Users TPC, he co-leads international efforts to rethink the role of humans in buildings in the energy transition to address climate change.
Building simulation has traditionally focused on building-level design and optimisation, but climate action demands understanding across scales—from individual occupant behaviour to city-wide energy systems.