On 1 October 2026 at 11:00 am, the Department of Energy will host Julian Wang from Pennsylvania State University for a seminar exploring the connections between building physics, energy, and human response. Integrating radiometry and photometry, the talk will examine how materials and buildings influence energy flows, comfort, and health, offering new insights into design that supports both energy performance and human well-being.

Abstract

Radiometry describes radiation as a physical phenomenon, while photometry provides a human-centered description of visible radiation. Although these two domains are often treated separately, they are fundamentally intertwined in the built environment: the same radiation interacts with materials, drives energy flows, shapes indoor and outdoor environments, and ultimately becomes part of human experience.

This talk proposes a radiometric–photometric perspective for connecting building materials, energy, environmental conditions, and human response. From building envelopes and glazing materials to visual and thermal environments, perceptual and physiological responses, and health, this perspective offers new ways to frame research questions and uncover connections that are often overlooked when these domains are studied independently.

Rather than viewing building performance and human experience as separate objectives, this approach considers them as interconnected outcomes of how materials and buildings mediate radiation. Selected examples from our research will illustrate how this framework can generate research directions across building materials, energy performance, and human-centered design, and how understanding radiation from both physical and human perspectives can lead to new ways of designing and evaluating the built environment.