Hashem Akbari

Hashem Akbari (born 13 August 1949) is an Iranian-American professor of Building, Civil, and Environmental Engineering at Concordia University. He specializes in research on the effects of urban heat islands, cool roofs and paving materials, energy efficiency, advanced integrated energy optimization in buildings.
Biography.
Akbari was born in Iran. He received his Ph.D. of Nuclear Engineering at University of California, Berkeley in 1979. He became a U.S. citizen in 1991. In 2009, he joined the Concordia University, where he founded a comprehensive laboratory to measure solar spectral reflectance and thermal emittance of common construction materials. Prior to joining the Concordia University, he was a senior scientist and the leader of the Heat Island Group at Environmental Energy Technologies Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) at the University of California (from 1983 to 2009). In 1985, he founded the Urban Heat Island (UHI) group, where he worked in the areas of heat-island quantification, mitigation and novel techniques in the analysis of energy use in buildings and industry in the United States and abroad.
Researches.
Akbari conducted ground-breaking researches on the potential for cool roofing and paving materials to reduce the urban heat islands effect. His work helped to propose and adopt cool roofs as a "prescriptive" requirement for low-slope nonresidential buildings in California. In 2003, his proposal was approved by the California Energy Commission, and it became effective later in October 2005. He provided basis and assistance for the development of cool roofs standards in Florida, Chicago, Georgia, and Atlanta.
His research has quantified the effect of cool roofs (increasing surface albedo) on cooling the globe. As a result of his research, the heat-island mitigation program has been expanding in other countries; e.g., city of Osaka, Japan has recently instituted a $1.7 B (170 B Yen) program of cool roofs, green roofs, and urban trees.
Akbari's contribution to the development of several international standards are:
In addition to the standards development, Akbari was the author of Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (2007 Nobel Peace Prize). He also contributed in writing of two chapters for ASHRAE Application Handbook: (1) Building Energy Monitoring and (2) Energy Use and Management. He published a guidebook for urban heat island mitigation.
Akbari is one of the founding organizers of the Global Cool Cities Alliance (vice Chairman of the Board, Technical committee chair), the Cool Roof Rating Council (CRRC) (ExOfficio Board Member, International Committee Chair), and the European Cool Roof Council (ECPR) (ExOfficio Board Member).