Kat Matthews (BSBA 2019) joins twenty-two other Georgia Tech students in the second class of Sustainable Undergraduate Research Fellows (SURF). The Fellows represent all six colleges at Georgia Tech and were selected from a highly qualified and competitive field of students.
The paid research fellows are developing prototypes of interactive building monitoring systems that convey the unique elements, qualities, and performance of the Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design, constructed from a $25 million gift from the Kendeda Fund with a completion date slated for late 2019. According the Living Building Challenge website, The Kendeda Fund and Georgia Tech intend for the project to become the first Living Building ChallengeTM 3.1 certified facility of its size and function in the Southeast.
In addition to prototype development, Matthews and her colleagues will study the behaviors that the Building engenders among its occupants and visitors. Through SURF, the students will learn about sustainability, systems thinking, and how to apply these principles to the Building.
“I decided to apply to be a Sustainable Undergraduate Research Fellow because I saw as it as an opportunity to have a more direct impact on sustainability at Georgia Tech,” says Matthews. “Our main focus right now is to collect research related to the Kendeda Living Building to develop different innovations that monitor the building and educate community members.”
The SURFers work is facilitated by Dr. Michael Chang, Deputy Director of the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems. Read more here.