Make your cover letter as awesome as you are

Do you hate writing cover letters? Wondering how to get noticed among the applicant pool for that dream job? In this interactive workshop we will explore together how to use a job ad as a blueprint for an effective cover letter that is tailored to the interests of the hiring committee. We will address the development of specific examples from your experiences to illustrate your qualifications, as well as strategies for making edits to your existing template for each new application. Participants are encouraged to bring their resume and cover letter long with a job ad to the session. Our workshop is designed for new and experienced librarians alike. Takeaways from this session include: 1) analyzing a job ad to determine what you should address in your letter 2) making your letter complement and enhance your resume3) tips and tricks for writing a letter that will get you noticed. Let\u27s make your cover letter stand out

Development of Closures for Collisions Between Realistic Particles

Systems consisting of solid particles can exhibit fluid-like motion and are common in industrial applications such as pharmaceutical or food processing. Such granular flows are often studied using simulation methods. One common simulation method is the discrete element method (DEM), which solves for the motion of individual particles based on Newton’s laws. However, large-scale particulate systems are difficult to study using DEM due to excessively long simulation times. The goal of this study is to reduce the computational load of these large-scale simulations. Instead of resolving particle trajectories throughout each collision, a scattering function is developed that directly relates the post-collision state to pre-collision properties. By bypassing the process of fully resolving particle collisions, the measured scattering functions can be used to decrease computational costs. The scattering function was formed by simulating many collisions between randomly oriented identical particles and determining the direction they rebound after each collision. The scope of this study includes the effect of elasticity, friction, and particle shape on the scattering function. The results of this study show elasticity, friction, and particle shape all influence the scattering function. Decreasing the elasticity, which increases the loss of energy in collisions, shows the scattering function favors forward scattering. Friction has the opposite effect on the scattering function as it tends to cause more backward scattering. Finally, collisions between more realistic non-spherical particles result in significant rotation and changes in the scattering behavior as compared to spherical particles

Advanced Modeling for Sustainable HVAC Operation to Mitigate Indoor Virus Transmission in Office Buildings

The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the challenges of operating buildings to address multiple, potentially conflicting, objectives. For example, the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system operation can be adapted to improve indoor air quality (IAQ) and reduce the risk of virus transmission. However, doing so has practical downsides on the HVAC operation, such as increasing energy consumption. Furthermore, changing the long-term operation to improve IAQ can lead to significant increases in costs and CO2 emissions. Additional research is needed to address these application needs and provide practical guidance to building operators. Building system modeling is a relatively fast and cost-effective method to evaluate HVAC operation strategies to mitigate indoor virus transmission, but further modeling advances are needed to perform the necessary assessments. A modeling capability for holistically evaluating HVAC operation to mitigate indoor virus that incorporates models for the virus dynamics in addition to the HVAC system and control is needed. Additionally, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methods are able to accurately capture indoor airflow distribution for these scenarios, but are too slow to be used for applications such as long-term analyses or control evaluations requiring small time steps. This dissertation hypothesizes that there are HVAC operation and control strategies that can reduce virus transmission with minimal impacts on sustainability factors, and modeling advances can help support these evaluations and provide guidance to building operators. Based on this hypothesis and the described research gaps, five fundamental research challenges are identified to address the application needs for evaluating HVAC operation strategies to mitigate indoor virus transmission. These five challenges are addressed with corresponding research objectives and tasks in this dissertation. The first challenge is to investigate the effects of HVAC virus mitigation strategies on both occupant health and building energy consumption. To address this challenge, the first objective of this dissertation is to improve current modeling capabilities for evaluating these mitigation strategies. In this dissertation, new models for HVAC filtration and indoor virus transmission are developed using Modelica language and are added to a prototypical office building system model. The new modeling capability incorporates the virus dynamics along with the HVAC system and control models to capture the short-term dynamics and pressure-flow dependencies crucial to evaluating HVAC virus mitigation strategies. It is then applied to investigate indoor virus concentration and HVAC energy consumption for two general mitigation strategies: 1) supplying 100% outdoor air into buildings and 2) using different HVAC filters, including MERV 10, MERV 13, and HEPA filters. The strategies are evaluated for a medium office building system sized for MERV 10 filtration in a cold and dry climate. The second challenge is to understand the long-term impacts of the mitigation strategies on IAQ, financial costs, and CO2 emissions in different locations. The research objective to address this challenge is to advance the new modeling capability to evaluate the mitigation strategies in different climate zones and consider associated costs and emissions of the strategies. This objective is carried out in this dissertation by evaluating the mitigation strategies for five different locations across the United States, with varying climates and electricity sources. New model development is performed to account for the building operation in different climate zones. The evaluation metrics are also extended to quantify the financial costs and CO2 emissions of the HVAC system for the mitigation strategies to determine their long-term impacts. Combined metrics of IAQ and costs/emissions are also proposed to seek a holistic performance evaluation. The third challenge is to determine how model parameter uncertainty in building system modeling affects the conclusions from HVAC virus mitigation evaluations, as well as which parameters are most influential to these conclusions. This challenge is addressed with the research objective to design a comprehensive model parameter uncertainty study to analyze the impact of uncertainty on evaluation of HVAC virus mitigation strategies. This dissertation introduces a model parameter uncertainty analysis to provide new insights on how uncertainty impacts tradeoffs of different mitigation strategies and decision making for building operators. Extensive literature review is conducted to identify 20 key model parameters and estimate their distributions considering non-normal and non-uniform distributions. All 20 parameters are simultaneously sampled from their distributions for each simulation, and sets of simulations are run for three representative days using the medium office building system model in a cold and dry climate. Parameter sensitivity analyses are performed to analyze which parameters are most influential to the variability of the IAQ and energy metrics, as well as the tradeoffs of these metrics for the different strategies. The fourth challenge is to assess how advanced building controls impact IAQ and energy consumption for indoor virus scenarios. The research objective to address this challenge is to implement advanced building control sequences and realize these controls using the medium office building system model to study their impacts on energy performance, IAQ, and control stability. In this dissertation, advanced control sequences from American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) Guideline 36 are studied to perform new evaluations of the impacts of advanced building controls for indoor virus scenarios. A co-simulation platform is designed to implement the controls in Python and realize these controls for the medium office building system model. Air-side and recently released water-side sequences are considered to analyze the impacts of the complex interactions of these sequences on energy performance, IAQ, and control stability. The fifth and final challenge is to accelerate current methods for simulating stratified indoor airflow distribution. CFD methods can provide valuable information to more accurately predict virus transmission risk, especially in rooms that are not well-mixed, but are too slow to be used for long-term and control evaluations of advanced HVAC operation strategies. This challenge is addressed with the research objective to implement a data-driven model trained by CFD simulations for fast prediction of indoor airflow distribution. A new BC-CGAN artificial intelligence model is created in this dissertation for fast generation of indoor airflow distribution images based on boundary condition inputs. A novel feature-driven algorithm for generating training data is also designed to minimize the amount of computationally expensive training data while including necessary data using a gradient-based approach. The new BC-CGAN model and feature-driven algorithm are evaluated for two benchmark airflow cases: an isothermal lid-driven cavity flow and non-isothermal mixed convection flow with a heated box. Future work can be conducted based on this dissertation. First, the developed component models for HVAC filtration and virus transmission can be applied to other building system models to evaluate mitigation strategies for different building types. They can also be used to study IAQ for outdoor contaminant scenarios, such as infiltration of PM2.5. Furthermore, other sources of uncertainty, such as stochastic occupancy, can be studied for the mitigation strategies. Finally, the new BC-CGAN model can be applied to predict indoor airflow distribution for a long-term evaluation of HVAC virus mitigation strategies.</p

Tradeoffs among indoor air quality, financial costs, and CO2 emissions for HVAC operation strategies to mitigate indoor virus in U.S. office buildings.

Adapting building operation during the COVID-19 pandemic to improve indoor air quality (IAQ) while ensuring sustainable solutions in terms of costs and CO2 emissions is challenging and limited in literature. Our previous study investigated different HVAC operation strategies, including increased filtration using MERV 10, MERV 13, or HEPA filters, as well as supplying 100% outdoor air into buildings for a system initially sized for MERV 10 filtration. This paper significantly extends that research by systematically analyzing the potential financial and environmental impact for different locations in the U.S. The previous medium office building system model is improved to account for operation in different climates. New evaluation metrics are created to consider the comprehensive impact of improving IAQ on costs and CO2 emissions, using dynamic emission factors for electricity generation depending on the location. HVAC operation strategies are studied in five different locations across the United States, with distinct climates and electricity sources. In four of the five locations, MERV 13 filtration offers the best improvement in IAQ per increase in costs and emissions relative to MERV 10. The exception is the mildest climate of San Diego, where use of 100% outdoor air provides the best IAQ with a limited increase in costs and emissions. A system not sized for HEPA filtration can lead to increased costs and emissions without much improvement in IAQ

A Perspective of Decarbonization Pathways in Future Buildings in the United States

The commitment of electrification and decarbonization goals in the United States (U.S.) will significantly change the performance of future buildings. To meet these goals, it is critical to summarize the existing research related to building electrification and decarbonization and discuss future research pathways. This paper provides a perspective on decarbonization pathways of future buildings in the U.S. A critical review of the existing research was conducted, which is divided into three closely linked categories: technologies, economic impacts, and code regulations. Technologies support investments and code regulations while marketing affects the design of building codes and standards. In the meantime, code regulations guide the development of technologies and marketing. Based on the review, future potential research directions for building decarbonization are then discussed. Due to the needs of building decarbonization, future research will be multidisciplinary, conducted at a large geographic scale, and involve a multitude of metrics, which will undoubtedly introduce new challenges. The perspective presented in this paper will provide policy-makers, researchers, building owners, and other stakeholders with a way to understand the impact of electrification and decarbonization of future buildings in the U.S

Assessing the use of portable air cleaners for reducing exposure to airborne diseases in a conference room with thermal stratification

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for strategies that mitigate the risk of aerosol disease transmission in indoor environments with different ventilation strategies. It is necessary for building operators to be able to estimate and compare the relative impacts of different mitigation strategies to determine suitable strategies for a particular situation. Using a validated CFD model, this study simulates the dispersion of exhaled contaminants in a thermally stratified conference room with overhead heating. The impacts of portable air-cleaners (PACs) on the room airflow and contaminant distribution were evaluated for different PAC locations and flow rates, as well as for different room setups (socially distanced or fully occupied). To obtain a holistic view of a strategy's impacts under different release scenarios, we simultaneously model the steady-state distribution of aerosolized virus contaminants from eight distinct sources in 18 cases for a total of 144 release scenarios. The simulations show that the location of the source, the PAC settings, and the room set-up can impact the average exposure and PAC effectiveness. For this studied case, the PACs reduced the room average exposure by 31%-66% relative to the baseline case. Some occupant locations were shown to have a higher-than-average exposure, particularly those seated near the airflow outlet, and occupants closest to sources tended to see the highest exposure from said source. We found that these PACs were effective at reducing the stratification caused by overhead heating, and also identified at least one sub-optimal location for placing a PAC in this space

Investigation of HVAC operation strategies for office buildings during COVID-19 pandemic

To minimize the indoor transmission of contaminants, such as the virus that can lead to COVID-19, buildings must provide the best indoor air quality possible. Improving indoor air quality can be achieved through the building's HVAC system to decrease any concentration of indoor contaminants by dilution and/or by source removal. However, doing so has practical downsides on the HVAC operation that are not always quantified in the literature. This paper develops a temporal simulation capability that is used to investigate the indoor virus concentration and operational cost of an HVAC system for two mitigation strategies: (1) supplying 100% outdoor air into the building and (2) using different HVAC filters, including MERV 10, MERV 13, and HEPA filters. These strategies are applied to a hypothetical medium office building consisting of five occupied zones and located in a cold and dry climate. We modeled the building using the Modelica Buildings library and developed new models for HVAC filtration and virus transmission to evaluate COVID-19 scenarios. We show that the ASHRAE-recommended MERV 13 filtration reduces the average virus concentration by about 10% when compared to MERV 10 filtration, with an increase in site energy consumption of about 3%. In contrast, the use of 100% outdoor air reduces the average indoor concentration by about an additional 1% compared to MERV 13 filtration, but significantly increases heating energy consumption. Use of HEPA filtration increases the average indoor concentration and energy consumption compared to MERV 13 filtration due to the high resistance of the HEPA filter

Relational practices for meaningful inclusion in health research: Results of a deliberative dialogue study

Abstract Introduction The importance of including people affected by research (e.g., community members, citizens or patient partners) is increasingly recognized across the breadth of institutions involved in connecting research with action. Yet, the increasing rhetoric of inclusion remains situated in research systems that tend to reward traditional dissemination and uphold power dynamics in ways that centre particular (privileged) voices over others. In research explicitly interested in doing research with those most affected by the issue or outcomes, research teams need to know how to advance meaningful inclusion. This study focused on listening to voices often excluded from research processes to understand what meaningful inclusion looks and feels like, and asked what contributes to being or feeling tokenized. Methods In this deliberative dialogue study, 16 participants with experience of navigating social exclusions and contributing to research activities reflected on what makes for meaningful experiences of inclusion. Using a co‐production approach, with a diversely representative research team of 15 that included patient and community partners, we used critically reflective dialogue to guide an inclusive process to study design and implementation, from conceptualization of research questions through to writing. Results We heard that: research practices, partnerships and systems all contribute to experiences of inclusion or exclusion; the insufficiency or absence of standards for accountability amplifies the experience of exclusion; and inclusive practices require intention, planning, reflection and resources. Conclusions We offer evidence‐informed recommendations for the deeply relational work and practices for inclusivity, focused on promising practices for cultivating welcoming systems, spaces and relationships. Patient or Public Contribution This work reflects a co‐production approach, where people who use and are affected by research results actively partnered in the research process, including study design, data‐generating activities, analysis and interpretation, and writing. Several of these partners are authors of this manuscript