Sustainability Council member, Dr. W. Mark McGinley, to serve as Conn Center theme leader for Energy Efficiency
The University of Louisville Conn Center for Renewable Energy Research announced on July 21, 2022 that long-time UofL Sustainability Council Education & Research Committee member, W. Mark McGinley, PhD, PE, FASTM, FTMS, will serve as Theme Leader for Energy Efficiency from 2022 through 2027.
Dr. McGinley is an endowed chair in infrastructure research and professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering in the JB Speed School of Engineering. He is a professional structural engineer and building scientist with over 37 years of research and forensic engineering practice in building systems. He is a fellow of the American Society for Testing and Materials International, having received the International Award of Merit in 2020. He currently serves as the chair of ASTM Committee C15 on Masonry Materials. He is also a Fellow of the Masonry Society for outstanding contributions to the practice, serving as the president of this international organization
Dr. McGinley's research includes structural performance of masonry walls, water penetration experiments on building envelopes, and the building envelope performance of brick veneer and steel stud wall systems. He has also been involved in multidisciplinary efforts on the evaluation of the energy systems of existing buildings and demonstration projects evaluating condensing heat exchangers and thermal mass effects of nighttime ventilation. Mark has been a primary author of all seven editions of the Masonry Designers Guide.
“Mark McGinley has been an outstanding researcher and leader since the center’s founding,” says Mahendra Sunkara, Conn Center director. “His vision for working with Kentucky’s manufacturing industries is vital for responding to the growing climate crisis. The potential for improving energy efficiency is everywhere.”
As a long-time collaborator with Conn Center, Mark has directed two Solar Decathlon competition team design/build efforts. The first was in 2012-13 for the US Department of Energy competition, which yielded the Phoenix House, the Conn Center’s current administrative offices and residential scale laboratory. The second was for the Solar Decathlon Middle East competition in 2020-21 to produce the Desert Phoenix House in conjunction with members from the American University of Sharjah, American University in Dubai, and Higher Colleges of Technology in UAE.
In 2018, Dr. McGinley and researchers from Conn Center were awarded $1M from the Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute (CESMII) to find cheaper, more energy-efficient ways to produce Portland cement, a critical component of concrete with a high energy requirement. Mark and his PhD student, Juan David Tabares, both received CESMII’s 2022 Smart Manufacturing Innovation Award for their innovations resulting in 15% savings in energy consumption.
In 2021, Dr. McGinley and researchers from Conn Center and the Kentucky Pollution Prevention Center were also awarded a 5-year, $1.75M grant from the US Department of Energy to establish the University of Louisville Industrial Assessment Center (ULIAC), which Mark co-directs. The ULIAC provides no-cost energy efficiency assessment and support to qualifying manufacturing companies and wastewater treatment plants in Kentucky, southwest Ohio, southern Indiana, southeast Illinois, and north central Tennessee.
“My work with the Conn Center for the last 12 years as an associated faculty member has been very rewarding, as energy and energy efficiency have long been a passion of mine,” says McGinley. “My association with the Conn Center has allowed me to team with outstanding like-minded researchers to address several interesting and significant energy related problems. Formalizing this relationship allows me to help determine how we husband our limited energy resources, lower our impact on the climate, and train the next generation of students to find the best solutions to these very challenging problems.”
To learn more about Dr. McGinley, see Conn Center. To request an assessment, visit ULIAC.org.
Source: Dr. W. Mark McGinley, to serve as Conn Center theme leader for Energy Efficiency (UofL Conn Center News, July 21, 2022)
