Nihar Pathak
Nihar Pathak is a Ph.D. candidate and Graduate Instructor at Carnegie Mellon University, where she studies buildings the way most people study personalities, by observing how they behave once occupied. Her research combines post-occupancy evaluation, indoor environmental quality, life-cycle assessment, and environmental sensing to answer one persistent question: Are our buildings actually doing okay?
She teaches a graduate course dedicated to data-driven design decisions, healthy buildings, and influencing spaces into performing better. Along the way, she wrangles sensors, benchmarks real buildings, co-advises community-based research projects, and contributes to book chapters, grants, and peer-reviewed work, often all at once.
A registered architect, LEED AP, and former sustainability consultant, Nihar has worked on everything from homes and hospitals to logistics parks and university campuses, proving that net-zero dreams and mechanical reality can coexist (with enough commissioning).
When not teaching, researching, or serving in too many leadership roles, including Vice President of Finance for CMU's Graduate Student Assembly, she runs on espresso, bakes aggressively savory foods, reads manga, watches anime, and insists that indoor air quality is both a science and a lifestyle.
Research Interests
- Indoor environmental quality (IEQ)
- Post-occupancy evaluation
- Life cycle studies
Teaching
- 48-629: Environment, Energy & Climate
- 48-768: Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ): Energy, Health and Productivity
Roles
- Center for Building Performance and Diagnostics (CBPD) robotics research: advancing building intelligence through the MS ERICA robot, building community capacity through indoor environmental quality education
- UDream Program Assistant Director
Affiliation
Advisors
Associate Professor, CBPD Co-Director, DDes Track Chair & Director for Student Relations
Associate Teaching Professor & AECM Track Chair
