Adhikari intends to use the funds towards research that will make buildings and energy systems more climate-resilient. Credit: Provided.
Engineering grad student wins ASHRAE grant-in-aid for resilient-building work
July 31, 2026
By Tucker Leighty-Phillips
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Rosina Adhikari, doctoral student in architectural engineering, has been awarded the ASHRAE Graduate Student Grant-In-Aid for the 2026-27 academic year from ASHRAE, formerly known as the American Society of Heating and Air-Conditioning Engineers. This $10,000 award is intended to support student research and foster increased participation in ASHRAE programming.
“The recognition feels great,” Adhikari said. “It’s a really nice encouragement, and I’m happy to have won, especially for such a well-known organization in our field.”
Adhikari describes her research as developing multi-scale building energy models and using them to study how to make buildings and energy systems more resilient toward future climates.
“There are multiple aspects of resilience,” Adhikari said. “First, the building itself. How do we make the indoor environment of the building resilient to outdoor extreme weather events? Heat waves, cold snaps, power outages. From the building-scale, it also extends to community scale, where I look at how do we leverage building’s flexible loads to make distribution grid resilient to such extreme weather events.”
Adhikari also researches demand regulation alongside heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system regulation, studying methods to ensure HVAC systems can maintain comfortable thermal environments while not overloading the grid.
The Grant-in-Aid award supports student travel to an ASHRAE society meeting. ASHRAE also encourages award winners to submit their funded research to the society for journal publication.
Adhikari said she looks forward to meeting other industry professionals, who might be approaching similar problems through different perspectives within the energy sector.
“I’m excited to attend the conferences, because the community is able to provide meaningful feedback on my research,” she said. “I want to become more engaged in the technical committee meetings, workshops and other aspects of their society, which are super useful to a researcher like me.”
Adhikari said she believes her work can support climate resilience efforts and hopes to encourage others.
“It can feel hopeless at times because of the scale of the issue,” Adhikari said. “But I still think we as individuals can try to do our best from wherever we can. I hope we can keep finding the strength to go forward.”
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