Diba Malekpour Koupaei

Diba Malekpour Koupaei, Ph.D., is a research fellow at the Center for Sustainable Building Research (CSBR). She earned a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Iowa State University in 2022 with a focus on energy efficiency assessments in the residential housing stock. Diba also holds master’s degrees in Civil Engineering (2020) and Sustainable Environments (2018), both from Iowa State University. She received her bachelor’s degree in Architectural Engineering (2015) from Art University of Isfahan.
Diba’s research interests are in energy-efficient buildings, integrated control systems for optimal building operations, and smart built environments and grids. Prior to joining University of Minnesota, Diba worked as a research analyst at the environmental non-profit Slipstream where her efforts were focused on quantifying energy systems’ performance, life cycle cost economics, and emissions reduction potential. Her work at CSBR is primarily focused on the development and administration of Minnesota’s Sustainable Building B3 Guidelines.

• Mitra, D., Malekpour Koupaei, D., and Cetin, K. (2022). Occupancy Data Sensing, Collection, and Modeling for Residential Buildings. Renewable Energy for Buildings. Green Energy and Technology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08732-5_6
• Malekpour Koupaei, D., Cetin, K., Passe U. (2021) Stochastic Residential Occupancy Schedules Based on the American Time-Use Survey. Science and Technology for the Built Environment, 28(6). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/23744731.2022.2087536
• Malekpour Koupaei, D., and Cetin, K. (2021) Smart Thermostats in Rental Housing Units: Perspectives from Landlords and Tenants. Journal of Architectural Engineering, 27(4). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)AE.1943-5568.0000516
• Malekpour Koupaei, D., Song, T., Cetin, K. and Im, J. (2020) An Assessment of Opinions and Perceptions of Smart Thermostats Using Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis of Online Reviews. Building and Environment, 170, 106603. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2019.106603
• Passe, U., Dorneich, M., Krejci, C., Malekpour Koupaei, D., Marmur, B., Shenk, L., Stonewall, J., Thompson, J. and Zhou, Y. (2020) An Urban Modelling Framework for Climate Resilience in Low-Resource Neighbourhoods. Buildings and Cities, 1(1), 453–474. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/bc.17