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Ulrike Passe, associate professor of architecture and director of the Iowa State University Center for Building Energy Research, was invited to lead a natural ventilation workshop at CATE 2019, Comfort at the Extremes: Energy, Economy, Climate conference April 10-11 at Heriot Watt University in Dubai, UAE. She also presented current research by her Sustainable Cities Research Group in the paper “Impact of trees on passive survivability in extreme heat events in warm and humid regions,” co-authored with Janette Thompson, Morrill Professor of natural resource ecology and management; Baskar Ganapathysubramanian, professor of mechanical engineering; and two doctoral students: Breanna Marmur, NREM, and Boshun Gao, mechanical engineering.

Passe received a travel scholarship from the Charitable Jeffrey Cook Trust to attend the meeting, which was organized by the international NCEUB (Network for Comfort and Energy Use in Buildings) and brought together experts from across the world from fields as diverse as architecture, engineering and health sciences for the first time “to discuss crucial questions and ways forward on how to best provide Comfort at the Extremes in the complex political and economic environments we occupy.”