AIRAH recognises outstanding students

The Australian Institute of Refrigeration, Air Conditioning and Heating (AIRAH) has a strong tradition of recognising outstanding students in HVAC&R at its annual awards presentation. This year is no exception.

AIRAH recently announced the finalists for Student of the Year – Higher Education or Research for the AIRAH Awards 2020.

The award recognises students who have demonstrated outstanding commitment to their studies and/or research at any level in the HVAC&R industry.

The winners will be announced at an online awards ceremony capping off AIRAH’s Outlook 2020 International HVAC&R Conference. The conference is a full-day virtual event featuring three keynote speakers, two panel sessions, five streams, a networking café, and more than 30 speakers.

This year’s finalists are:

Nima Izadyar, Affil.AIRAH

Izadyar has demonstrated excellence in combining socio-technical approaches to real-world problems.

His PhD research has focused on quantifying the impact of balcony geometry on natural ventilation in medium and high-rise apartments with single-sided ventilation. He was interested in determining the extent to which well-designed balconies contribute to occupant thermal comfort in hot sub-tropical summer conditions, minimising or eliminating the reliance on, and the monetary and environmental impacts of, mechanical cooling.

Izadyar’s high-quality work is demonstrated by his 13 academic publications (since 2015) and by the various awards and positions he has held in Iran, Malaysia and Australia.

Yunlong Ma, Affil.AIRAH

Ma has undertaken two master’s degrees and is in the final stages of his PhD. He has focused on developing and testing a theoretical “best” energy performance code for Australia’s commercial buildings. This was done by comparing the stringency of performance requirements across four countries: Australia, the US, China and Germany.

The most stringent requirements were then collated into a theoretical “best” code that was then applied to Australian office buildings, with outputs compared to the energy performance of buildings constructed to NCC 2016 requirements.

Ma’s study has shown the benefits of alternative approaches to the development of building codes and to regulatory impact assessment of code adoption.

The AIRAH Awards 2020 will be held as a free-admission virtual event on Tuesday, November 10 at 4.30pm (NSW, Vic, ACT, Tas) | 4pm (SA) | 3.30pm (Qld) | 3pm (NT) | 1.30pm (WA).

For more information and to register for the Awards Ceremony, please click here.