“I see users of buildings as the most important assets of buildings. The value, including the financial value, of Health, Comfort and Productivity of users outweighs the building and running costs by far. Therefore, the user should be our prime point-of-attention!”

Marcel Loomans is associate professor in the group Building Performance in the Department of the Built Environment, Eindhoven university of Technology (TU/e). His research is grouped under the name Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) Performance. This includes areas of expertise related to building technology, environmental studies, indoor environment, building physics, computational fluid dynamics, sustainable energy and performance based building. His research interests focus on the performance of the indoor environment (mainly thermal and air quality), as well in the design as in-use phase. As it is very much multidisciplinary, this topic needs close collaboration. It touches on several fields of expertise.

Indoor environmental quality in health care environments (from the operating theatre to patient rooms) has been investigated, as have the sleeping environment in dwellings and spatial and temporal transients that users undergo when using buildings in real-life, to name just a a few examples. Real-life in-situ assessment, combining physical sensors and the human sensor (perception and/or physiological) is another area of attention. Currently, focus is also very much on indoor air quality and ventilation.

Marcel Loomans obtained his PhD on the topic of indoor air flow (measurement and simulation) in 1998. He continued his work at the Dutch Applied Research Institute TNO and returned to TU/e in 2006. He has participated in several national and international projects related to these topics and has been or is advisor of more than 60 final year MSc students and 5 PhD students. Marcel has authored or co-authored more than 30 scientific journal papers, more than 75 academic conference contributions and more than 40 professional publications.

Marcel was (7/2016-7/2018) president of the International Society of Indoor Air Quality and Climate (ISIAQ) and a member of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE). He is a reviewer for several international peer-reviewed scientific journals such as Building and Environment and Energy and Buildings and was president of the ISIAQ international Healthy Building 2015 Europe conference (Eindhoven May 18-20th 2015). He currently is active in national societies (ISIAQ.nl, TVVL).