Biography

CV and publication record (last update: January 2018)

Marilyne Andersen is a Full Professor of Sustainable Construction Technologies and heads the Laboratory of Integrated Performance in Design (LIPID) that she launched in the Fall of 2010. She was Dean of the School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering of EPFL (ENAC) from 2013 to 2018. Before joining EPFL as a faculty, she was an Assistant Professor then Associate Professor tenure-track in the Building Technology Group of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning and the Head of the MIT Daylighting Lab that she founded in 2004.

Marilyne Andersen owns a Master of Science in Physics and specialized in daylighting through her PhD in Building Physics at EPFL in the Solar Energy and Building Physics Laboratory (LESO) and as a Visiting Scholar in the Building Technologies Department of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.
Her research focuses on building performance in the architectural context in general, and the use and optimization of daylight in buildings in particular. Specific topics she has been working on include: visual and thermal comfort; design tools in the early stages of the design process; goal-driven approaches in design; performance visualization; design implications of effects of light on circadian photoreception and health; advanced glazing and shading systems, daylight redirecting devices; video-based approaches in photometry.

Marilyne Andersen has been teaching doctoral, graduate and undergraduate level classes on Daylighting and Building Technology and has been involved in workshops, studios or classes related to these fields. She has been and is supervising research and thesis work for undergraduate and graduate students in architecture, building technology and mechanical, civil and environmental engineering. She was the leader and faculty advisor of the Swiss Team and its NeighborHub project, who won the U.S. Solar Decathlon 2017 competition with 8 podiums out of 10 contests.
As part of her non-institutional activities, she has been hired as a daylighting consultant for design projects for housing, campus buildings and mid-rise office buildings and as an expert for a patent infringement case. She is an active member of several Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) and International Commission on Illumination (CIE) committees.

She is the author of more than 100 papers published in peer-reviewed journals and international conferences and the recipient of several grants and awards including: the Daylight Award for Research (2016), three best conference paper awards (2011 & 2012), the Taylor Technical Talent Award granted by the Illuminating Engineering Society (2009), the 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Grant (2009), the Mitsui Career Development Professorship at MIT (2008) and the EPFL prize of the Chorafas Foundation awarded to her PhD thesis in Sustainability (2005). Her research or teaching has been supported by professional, institutional and industrial organizations such as: the Swiss and the U.S. National Science Foundations, the Velux Foundation, the Swiss Energy and Mobility Competence Center, the Boston Society of Architects, the MIT Energy Initiative and 3M.

She is a member of the Board of the LafargeHolcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction, Expert to the Innovation Council of InnoSuisse and founding member as well as Board member of the Foundation Culture du Bâti (CUB). She is also co-founder of the Sàrl OCULIGHT Dynamics and founding member of the Daylight Academy. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Elsevier Journal Building and Environment and of the Taylor and Francis Journal of the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) LEUKOS.