MIT's Technology Review has recognized Burcin Becerik-Gerber of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering as one of the world's top 35 innovators under the age of 35, it was announced today. As an honoree on the magazine's 2012 TR35 list, Becerik-Gerber joins 34 other innovators spanning the fields of energy, biotechnology, nanotechnology, the Web, computer and electronics hardware and software, and other emerging disciplines.
An assistant professor in USC's Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, she marks the sixth TR35 distinction for USC Viterbi in the last four years.
With a background in both civil engineering and architecture, Becerik-Gerber seeks to reduce building energy consumption and increase occupant comfort through solutions that discover and learn the behavior of building occupants as well as the behavior of the building and its systems and devices. Her work builds on new sensor modalities, social and mobile computing, and artificial and enabling technologies that create new forms of interactive, responsive, adaptive and sustainable experiences and buildings.
With degrees from Istanbul Technical University, the University of California at Berkeley, and Harvard University, Becerik-Gerber has worked as a construction manager, a technologist, an architect, and a professor.
"Being both an architect and an engineer, Burcin perfectly understands both the context and the physics of buildings and uses this powerful platform to innovate," said USC Viterbi Dean Yannis C. Yortsos. "We are very proud of her distinction."
"Burcin envisions an unprecedented 'new world' of fully integrated human-building systems, where intelligence coordinates occupant's behavior, energy usage and elicits optimal building responses. She has taken her ideas for an energy aware society to the lab and began to invent, and implement her vision for a hyper dynamic and learned energy aware society," said Dr. Lucio Soibelman, Chair of USC's Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Becerik-Gerber's mentor.
TR35 honorees are selected by a panel of expert judges and the editorial staff of Technology Review, who this year evaluated more than 250 nominations. On October 24-26 of this year, Becerik-Gerber will join other TR35 honorees in discussing their achievements at the EmTech MIT 2012 conference, taking place at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Mass. All of the TR35 winners for 2012 will be featured the September/October issue of Technology Review and online at www.technologyreview.com/tr35/.
"This year's TR35 recipients are applying technology to some our generation's greatest challenges, and innovating to improve the way we live and work," said Jason Pontin, editor-in-chief and publisher of Technology Review. "We look forward to watching these young technology leaders grow and advance over the coming years."
Additional information about past and present TR35 winners and judges is available at www.technologyreview.com/tr35/. For more information about EmTech MIT 2012 please visit: http://www.technologyreview.com/EmTech.
About the USC Viterbi School
Engineering Studies began at the University of Southern California in 1905. Nearly a century later, the Viterbi School of Engineering received a naming gift in 2004 from alumnus Andrew J. Viterbi, inventor of the Viterbi algorithm now key to cell phone technology and numerous data applications. Consistently ranked among the top graduate programs in the world, the school enrolls more than 5,000 graduate and undergraduate students, taught by 172 tenured and tenure-track faculty, with more than 50 endowed chairs and professorships. For more information, please visit http://viterbi.usc.edu.
About Technology Review, Inc.
Technology Review is leading the global conversation about technologies that matter. An independent media company owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), more than 4.5 million business leaders, innovators, thought leaders and early adopters around the globe read our publications, in five languages and on a variety of digital and print platforms. We publish Technology Review magazine, the world's longest-running and most respected technology magazine (established 1899); daily news, analysis, opinion, and video; and Business Reports, which explains how new technologies are transforming companies, disrupting markets, or creating entirely new industries. Technology Review also produces live events such as the annual EmTech MIT and international EmTech conferences, Technology Summits and Salons. The publication's entrepreneurial community organization, the MIT Enterprise Forum, hosts events around the world.