Tarek Rakha joined Georgia Tech as Assistant Professor of Architecture in 2019 and was appointed Director of the High Performance Building Lab (HPBL) in 2021. His research and teaching aims to transform climate-responsive and sustainable architectural design decisions to advance racially and socially just solutions using robotics, sensing, modeling, machine learning, and Artificial Intelligence (AI). He is an expert in building and urban performance simulation, vulnerability diagnostics using computer vision drones, and outdoor comfort for walkable and bikeable cities. He previously taught at Syracuse University (SU), RISD, and MIT. Rakha’s research is transdisciplinary, and he has led and collaborated on major built environment research projects. He is currently the Principal Investigator (PI) of a $1.8M U.S. DOE award called “Aerial Intelligence for Retrofit Building Energy Modeling (AirBEM).” His research received funding from the NSF, ARPA-E, NYSERDA, NYSDOT, and GDOT, among others.