Stephen Selkowitz

Stephen Selkowitz has spent 40 years developing and promoting sustainable building technologies and design practices and working to drive those innovations into widespread practice. As Senior Advisor for Building Science, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, he now serves in a part time research and strategic planning role at LBNL after leading their building performance teams in R&D and deployment of energy efficient technologies and sustainable design practices. He complements his ongoing LBNL research role with a new advisory and consulting role in supporting the building industry’s transition to more sustainable practices. He is an internationally recognized expert on high performance buildings, ranging from policies to promote Zero Net Energy building solutions and activities to develop design tools and processes that guarantee delivery of workable solutions, to a technical focus on window technologies, facade systems, shading solutions, daylighting, and integrated building systems solutions. He led the LBNL Windows and Daylighting Group for 40 years and the LBNL Building Technologies Department for 25 years, partnering with industry to develop and demonstrate new technologies, systems, processes and tools that address not only energy and sustainability but enhance human comfort and performance. His research group collaborated with numerous building owners and design teams to advance cutting edge, but pragmatic solutions, most recently through the use of full-scale performance testbeds and mockups, both on-site (New York Times Headquarters) and at LBNL (FLEXLAB). He serves as Scientific Advisor to several international building science programs that address zero net energy building solutions, serves as a consultant to industry, has spoken at over 400 scientific, business and industry venues and authored over 170 publications, 5 books and holds 2 patents. He holds an AB in Physics from Harvard College and an MFA in Environmental Design from California Institute of the Arts. In 2012 he was the recipient of LBNL’s first “Lifetime Achievement Award for Societal Impact”; in 2014 received McGraw Hill/ENR’s prestigious “Award of Excellence” for “relentlessly working to reduce the carbon footprint of buildings and for moving the nation towards better building performance” and in 2016 was elected to the Facade Tectonics Institute College of Fellows.