Andrew Sonta
EPFL ENAC IIC ETHOS
HBL 1 3B (Halle Bleue)
Pass. du Cardinal 13b
1700 Fribourg
Web site: Web site: https://ETHOS.epfl.ch
EPFL ENAC IIC ETHOS
HBL 1 3B (Halle Bleue)
Pass. du Cardinal 13b
1700 Fribourg
Web site: Web site: https://www.epfl.ch/schools/enac/about/diversity-office/
Fields of expertise
Human-building interaction, building energy, occupant behavior, sustainable design and planning, walkability, network analysis, machine learning, urban informatics, social systems.
Biography
Andrew Sonta is a tenure track assistant professor of sustainable civil engineering at EPFL. He directs the ETHOS Lab: Engineering and Technology for Human Oriented Sustainability. ETHOS is an interdisciplinary research group focused on using data-driven and computational tools to create interventions in the built environment that advance our social and environmental sustainability goals. Areas of work include human-building interaction, building energy efficiency, socio-environmental analysis of urban form, and urban energy systems.Andrew completed his undergraduate work at Northwestern University in civil engineering, where he also studied architecture and economics. He obtained his MS and PhD from Stanford University's Sustainable Design and Construction program in civil engineering. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University's Data Science Institute before arriving at EPFL.
Education
PhD
Civil Engineering
Stanford University
2020
MS
Civil Engineering
Stanford University
2017
BS
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Northwestern University
2015
Publications
Infoscience publications
Journal Articles
Rethinking walkability: Exploring the relationship between urban form and neighborhood social cohesion
Sustainable Cities and Society. 2023. DOI : 10.1016/j.scs.2023.104903.A Global Building Occupant Behavior Database
Scientific Data. 2022. DOI : 10.1038/s41597-022-01475-3.Magic Walls
Joule. 2021. DOI : 10.1016/j.joule.2021.07.018.Data-driven optimization of building layouts for energy efficiency
Energy and Buildings. 2021. DOI : 10.1016/j.enbuild.2021.110815.Simulation-aided occupant-centric building design: A critical review of tools, methods, and applications
Energy and Buildings. 2020. DOI : 10.1016/j.enbuild.2020.110292.Learning socio-organizational network structure in buildings with ambient sensing data
Data-Centric Engineering. 2020. DOI : 10.1017/dce.2020.9.Building relationships: Using embedded plug load sensors for occupant network inference
IEEE Embedded Systems Letters. 2019. DOI : 10.1109/LES.2019.2937316.Understanding building occupant activities at scale: An integrated knowledge-based and data-driven approach
Advanced Engineering Informatics. 2018. DOI : 10.1016/j.aei.2018.04.009.OESPG: Computational Framework for Multidimensional Analysis of Occupant Energy Use Data in Commercial Buildings
Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering. 2017. DOI : 10.1061/(ASCE)CP.1943-5487.0000663.Conference Papers
OccuVAE: Integrating unsupervised occupancy inference in data-driven energy modeling for human-centric operation
2023. The 10th ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy- Efficient Buildings, Cities, and Transportation (BuildSys ’23), Istanbul, Turkey, November 2023. DOI : 10.1145/3600100.3626342.RECA: A Multi-Task Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based Recommender System for Co-Optimizing Energy, Comfort and Air Quality in Commercial Buildings
2023. The 10th ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy- Efficient Buildings, Cities, and Transportation (BuildSys ’23), Istanbul, Turkey, November 15-16, 2023. p. 99–109. DOI : 10.1145/3600100.3623735.Data-driven simulation of room-level building energy consumption
2021. ASCE International Conference on Computing in Civil Engineering 2021, Orlando, Florida, USA, September 12-14, 2021. p. 1153-1161. DOI : 10.1061/9780784483893.141.Intelligent network topology based post-pandemic reintroduction policies for offices
2020. 7th ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Buildings, Cities, and Transportation (BuildSys ’20), Yokohoma, Japan, November 18-20, 2020. p. 258-261. DOI : 10.1145/3408308.3427616.Optimizing neighborhood-scale walkability
2019. ASCE International Conference on Computing in Civil Engineering 2019, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, June 17-19, 2019. p. 454-461. DOI : 10.1061/9780784482438.058.Data-driven building layout optimization for energy efficiency
2019. 11th International Conference on Applied Energy (ICAE2019), Västerås, Sweden, August 12-15, 2019. DOI : 10.46855/energy-proceedings-2486.Inferring occupant ties: Automated inference of occupant network structure in commercial buildings
2018. 5th Conference on Systems for Built Environments (BuildSys '18), Shenzhen, China, November 7-8, 2018. p. 126-129. DOI : 10.1145/3276774.3276779.Towards automated inference of occupant behavioral dynamics using plug-load energy data
2017. ASCE International Workshop on Computing in Civil Engineering 2017, Seattle, Washington, USA, June 25-27, 2017. p. 290-297. DOI : 10.1061/9780784480823.035.Book Chapters
Detailed Case Studies
Occupant-Centric Simulation-Aided Building Design; New York: Routledge, 2023. p. 398.Teaching & PhD
Teaching
Civil Engineering
Projeter ensemble ENAC
Courses
Engineering a sustainable built environment
This course explicitly addresses the issue of sustainability in the built environment through an engineering lens. It covers the sustainability and energy landscape, approaches to sustainability in civil engineering, and specific tools for enacting sustainability in civil engineering.
Computational systems thinking for sustainable eng.
This course integrates systems thinking and network analysis through theory and computing. The objective of this course is to develop expertise in computationally analyzing and modeling complex systems in civil and urban systems engineering, with a particular emphasis on advancing sustainability.
Sustainability
This course presents global sustainability issues. It introduces planetary boundaries, their systemic interconnections and social justice issues. The interdisciplinary approach introduces group work and systems thinking (interdependencies in a complex system).