Achilles Karagiozis is the director of NREL’s Buildings and Thermal Sciences Center. He manages a multidisciplinary team of approximately 150 researchers within the laboratory’s Buildings research groups.

He provides strategic planning to bolster NREL efforts to transform energy through buildings science and integration. His work is focused on accelerating the development of strategic technical capabilities and directing world-class multidisciplinary research funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, other federal agencies, and industry partners.

Dr. Karagiozis comes to NREL from Owens Corning where he was the global director of building science and led global accountability for the company's building science strategy. During his 9-year tenure, he shaped, educated, and trained others in energy efficiency and green building science, transforming building science into a growth engine aimed at accelerating energy-efficiency improvements in the built environment.

Before joining Owens Corning, Dr. Karagiozis was a distinguished researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where he worked for 16 years. His more than 130 publications have been cited over 1,200 times, and he has an h-index of 18. He chairs ASHRAE Standard Project Committee 160, which specifies criteria for designing high-performance buildings. He was an Energy and Environmental Building Alliance board member and served on the Passive House Institute US Technical Committee.

Research Interests

Energy fundamentals

Multiscale behavior of porous media

Hygrothermics

Materials science and durability

Data analytics

Large-scale multiphysics modeling

Field analytics

Renewable energy systems

Energy storage

Phase change materials

Grid-interactive efficient buildings

Human-centered design

Education

Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering, University of Waterloo

M.S. Fluid Dynamics, von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics

M.S. Mechanical Engineering, University of New Brunswick

B.S. Mechanical Engineering, University of New Brunswick

Featured Work

Simulation of indoor temperature and humidity conditions including hygrothermal interactions with the building envelope, Solar Energy (2005)

Hygrothermal system-performance of a whole building, Building and Environment (2001)

Wind-driven rain distributions on two buildings, Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics (1997)

Natural convection heat transfer from arrays of isothermal triangular fins in air, Journal of Heat Transfer (1994)

Effect of selective surface degradation on the performance of solar water heating systems, Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells (1992)

Temperature distribution in a slab during hot rolling, Journal of Engineering Materials and Technology (1988)

The effect of phase changes of moisture on the hygrothermal behaviour of walls subjected to hot and humid climates, ASME/JSME Thermal Engineering Conference (1994)