Dr. Yongling Zhao
Dr. Yongling Zhao
Lecturer at the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering
Additional information
Research area
My most recent research is on:
1. Fluid tunnel (wind & water) modeling of heat removal
2. Green infrastructure and intervention for urban climate adaptation
3. Understanding the heat flux of urban heat in the events of heat waves
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I had been fascinated by basic fluid mechanics problems since my PhD studies, which led me to choose to work on innovative control of heat transfer. Given the impact of my work in this field, I received a Certificate of Research Excellence from the University of Sydney.
Since joining the Chair of Building Physics at ETH Zurich in 2019, I have been in charge of a subgroup based in the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology to perform physical modeling of urban climate using Switzerland's first multiscale water tunnel. As part of the project entitled 'Future Resilient Systems' hosted at the Singapore-ETH Center, my work revealed decisive roles of thermal buoyancy in heat removal from urban environments.
I have recently established multi-disciplinary, multi-approach urban climate studies on topics concerning the time-evolving benefits of urban vegetation , urban energy for cooling in a changing climate, the use of machine learning for urban air temperature prediction, and evidence-based urban heat-related policy making . To bridge the gap between engineering solutions and societal considerations for combating urban heat, I recently proposed and received an SNSF scientific exchange project entitled 'Connecting urban physics and data-driven design for well-being' .
As a lead lecturer for the Urban Physics course at ETH Zurich, I also teach the state-of-the-art in my research field.