Burcin Becerik-Gerber

Burcin Becerik-Gerber is a Turkish American engineering educator and Professor in the Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Southern California. She is known for her work in human-building interaction, a new field she pioneered, which researches the design and use of technology that focuses on the interfaces between buildings and their users. She is the founding director of the Innovation in Integrated Informatics LAB and the director of USC’s Center for Intelligent Environments (CENTIENTS). She puts a specific focus on human-building communication to change both user behavior and building behavior through trust in automation. Her research puts a deliberate emphasis on people centric artificial intelligence for the built environment, for example smart workstations to improve well being in the workplace.

Biography

Becerik-Gerber was born in Izmir, Turkey. She completed her undergraduate studies at the Istanbul Technical University (1999). She then moved to the United States, to continue her graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where she earned her MSc in Engineering in 2002 and a Doctor of Design (DDes) from Harvard University in 2006. She worked as a management consultant at Camp Dresser and McKee (CDM) between 2006 and 2008. In 2008, she joined the faculty at the University of Southern California as an Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering. She was promoted to Associate Professor in 2015 and to Full Professor in 2019.

Awards and honors

Becerik-Gerber held the Stephen Schrank Early Career Chair between 2012 and 2019. Her work have been recognized through various awards, including the MIT Technology Review’s TR35 Recognition in 2012, an NSF CAREER Award in 2014, and a Rutherford Visiting Fellowship at the Alan Turing Institute in 2018. She has served as an associate editor for the Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering since 2011.

Selected works

1. Ahmadi-Karvigh, Simin; Becerik-Gerber, Burcin; Soibelman, Lucio (2019). "Intelligent adaptive automation: A framework for an activity-driven and user-centered building automation". Energy and Buildings. 188-189: 184–199. doi:10.1016/j.enbuild.2019.02.007.
2. Khashe, Saba; Lucas, Gale; Becerik-Gerber, Burcin; Gratch, Jonathan (2018). "Establishing Social Dialog between Buildings and Their Users". International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction. 35 (17): 1545–1556. doi:10.1080/10447318.2018.1555346.
3. Aryal, Ashrant; Anselmo, Francesco; Becerik-Gerber, Burcin (2018). "Smart IoT desk for personalizing indoor environmental conditions". Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on the Internet of Things - IOT '18. pp. 1–6. doi:10.1145/3277593.3277614. ISBN 9781450365642.
4. Khashe, Saba; Lucas, Gale; Becerik-Gerber, Burcin; Gratch, Jonathan (2017). "Buildings with persona: Towards effective building-occupant communication". Computers in Human Behavior. 75: 607–618. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2017.05.040.
5. Heydarian, Arsalan; Pantazis, Evangelos; Wang, Alan; Gerber, David; Becerik-Gerber, Burcin (2017). "Towards user centered building design: Identifying end-user lighting preferences via immersive virtual environments". Automation in Construction. 81: 56–66. doi:10.1016/j.autcon.2017.05.003.
6. Ahmadi-Karvigh, Simin; Ghahramani, Ali; Becerik-Gerber, Burcin; Soibelman, Lucio (2017). "One size does not fit all: Understanding user preferences for building automation systems". Energy and Buildings. 145: 163–173. doi:10.1016/j.enbuild.2017.04.015.
7. Jazizadeh, Farrokh; Ghahramani, Ali; Becerik-Gerber, Burcin; Kichkaylo, Tatiana; Orosz, Michael (2014). "Human-Building Interaction Framework for Personalized Thermal Comfort-Driven Systems in Office Buildings". Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering. 28: 2–16. doi:10.1061/(ASCE)CP.1943-5487.0000300.