Current Positions

• Professor of Sustainable Architecture and Building Technology, University of Liège, Belgium
• Head and Founder of the Sustainable Building Design Lab (SBD Lab), University of Liège (since 2014)
• Adjunct Professor, Southwest Jiaotong University, China (since 2024)
• Research Council Member, Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) (since 2024)

Professional Profile

Shady Attia is an internationally recognized researcher and educator in sustainable architecture, building technology, urban climate adaptation, resilient cooling, net-zero carbon buildings, circular construction, and building performance simulation. He founded and leads the Sustainable Building Design Lab (SBD Lab) at the University of Liège.

His work focuses on decision-support tools for high-performance buildings and cities, integrating energy efficiency, thermal comfort, life-cycle assessment, circularity, climate resilience, and urban heat mitigation. He has extensive experience in research innovation, technology transfer, international capacity building, and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Education

PhD in Sustainable Architecture

Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain), Belgium

MSc in Landscape Architecture and Planning

Wageningen University, The Netherlands (cum laude)

Bachelor of Architectural Engineering

Helwan University, Egypt
Ranked 1st in class (1/315) and recipient of the Best Graduation Project Award.

Research Expertise

• Sustainable Architecture
• High-Performance Buildings
• Net-Zero Energy Buildings
• Net-Zero Carbon Buildings
• Whole-Life Carbon Assessment
• Circular Construction
• Building Performance Simulation
• Urban Climate and Urban Heat Islands
• Resilient Cooling
• Adaptive Thermal Comfort
• Building Energy Renovation
• Building Integrated Renewable Energy Systems
• Climate Change Adaptation
• Sustainable Building Materials
• Building Digitalization and Decision Support Systems

International Leadership and Service

International Energy Agency (IEA)

Active contributor to multiple IEA Technology Collaboration Programmes, including:

• IEA EBC Annex 97: Sustainable Cooling in Cities
• IEA EBC Annex 89: Net-Zero Whole-Life Carbon Buildings
• IEA Annex 80: Resilient Cooling in Buildings
• IEA ES Task 43: Thermal Building Mass Storage
• IEA SHC Task 51: Solar Energy and Urban Planning
• IEA SHC Task 40: Towards Net-Zero Energy Buildings
• IEA SHC Task 41: Solar Energy and Architecture

International Standardization

Representative of Belgium in several ISO standardization activities related to sustainability, buildings, and circular economy.

Professional Associations

• International Building Performance Simulation Association (IBPSA)
• U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC)
• LEED Accredited Professional

Research Funding and Project Leadership

Principal Investigator, Co-Investigator, and Researcher on more than 29 international research projects with cumulative funding exceeding €5 million.

Major themes include:

• Sustainable Cooling
• Circular Economy in Construction
• Net-Zero Carbon Buildings
• Building Renovation
• Urban Heat Mitigation
• Adaptive Facades
• Thermal Energy Storage
• Timber Construction
• Earth Construction
• Climate Resilience

Awards and Recognition

• Ranked among the World's Top 2% Scientists (Stanford University rankings, multiple consecutive years)
• Top Reviewer in Architectural Engineering (Clarivate / Web of Science)
• Publons Top 1% Reviewer in Engineering
• Elsevier Outstanding Reviewer Award
• World Sustainable Energy Days Scientific Committee Award
• Multiple international best paper, best poster, and scientific excellence awards

Consulting and Professional Practice

More than 15 years of international consulting experience in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, including:

• Building Performance Simulation
• LEED Certification
• Net-Zero Energy Design
• Sustainable Building Assessment
• Building Energy Audits
• Building Commissioning
• Product Sustainability and Environmental Declarations

Projects have included work for:

• Google
• Mastercard Europe
• NATO
• Pfizer
• Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi
• L'Oréal
• ArcelorMittal

International Collaboration

Research and educational cooperation projects in: Belgium, Switzerland, China, Chile, Poland, Jordan, Burkina Faso, Madagascar, Iraq, UAE, Egypt, Lebanon, Qatar, Austria, Germany, Netherlands, and Turkey.

Keynote and Invited Speaker

Frequent keynote speaker and invited lecturer at leading universities, international conferences, government agencies, and professional organizations worldwide, with presentations across Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America.

Editorial Leadership

Professor Shady Attia serves in editorial leadership and editorial board roles for international peer-reviewed journals covering building science, sustainability, energy, construction engineering, urban climate, climate resilience, and building performance simulation.

Executive Editor

• MethodsX (Elsevier), Executive Editor, Energy Sector (2025–Present)
• Data in Brief (Elsevier), Executive Editor, Engineering & Materials Science (2023–Present)

Associate Editor

• Built Environment and Power Systems (2026–Present)
• Sustainability in Smart Cities (2026–Present)
• Green Technologies and Sustainability (KeAi / Elsevier) (2025–Present)
• Urban and Building Science (Scilight Press) (2025–Present)
• Energy & Buildings (Elsevier) (2023–Present)

Editorial and Section Board Memberships

• Advances in Carbon Neutrality (ACN) (MDPI), Editorial Board Member (2026–Present)
• ZeroBuild Journal, Editorial Board Member (2023–Present)
• Energy & Buildings (Elsevier), Editorial Board Member (2023–Present)
• Building and Environment (Elsevier), Editorial Board Member (2023–Present)
• Data in Brief (Elsevier), Editorial Board Member (2022–Present)
• MethodsX (Elsevier), Editorial Board Member (2022–Present)
• Buildings (MDPI), Editorial Board Member (2022–Present)
• Sustainability (MDPI), Section Board Member, Green Building Section (2021–Present)
• Atmosphere (MDPI), Section Board Member (2019–Present)
• Frontiers in Sustainability, Editorial Board Member (2022–Present)
• Advances in Building Energy Research (Taylor & Francis), Editorial Board Member (2020–Present)
• Journal of Building Performance Simulation (Taylor & Francis), Editorial Board Member (2020–2025)

Topic Editor

• Climate Change and Environmental Sustainability, 4th Edition (MDPI), Topic Editor (2024–2025)

Guest Editor, Guest Advisor, and Special Issues

Professor Attia has served as Guest Editor, Guest Advisor, and Topic Editor for Special Issues and Article Collections addressing climate resilience, net-zero buildings, urban climate, sustainable construction, building performance simulation, artificial intelligence, smart cities, and environmental technologies.

2023–2024

• Data Acquisition and Monitoring of Urban Infrastructures, Data in Brief (Elsevier), Guest Editor (2023–2024)
• Enhancing Thermal Comfort and Climate Resilience of Buildings during Extreme Events, Buildings (MDPI), Guest Editor (2023). Submission deadline: 31 December 2023.
• Enhancing Thermal Comfort and Climate Resilience of Buildings during Extreme Events, Sustainability (MDPI), Guest Editor (2023–2024). Submission deadline: 30 June 2024.
• Environmental Technologies and Climate Emergency Practices in the Built Environment, Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering (Taylor & Francis), Article Collection Guest Advisor (2023–2024). Professor Attia served alongside Karam Al-Obaidi, Amirhosein Ghaffarianhoseini, Baojie He, and Eshrar Latif. The manuscript deadline was 30 June 2024.

2024–2025

• Climate Change and Environmental Sustainability, 4th Edition, MDPI, Topic Editor (2024–2025).
• Trust in or Mis-use of Building Performance Simulation: Implications for the Performance Gap and the Future of Energy and Carbon in Building Codes, Buildings & Cities, Special Issue (2024–2025). The special issue addresses the reliability and appropriate use of building performance simulation, including uncertainty, calibration, validation, performance gaps, integration of measured data, energy-code compliance, and AI-supported simulation.

2025–2026

• From Data to Knowledge: An Integrated Process for the Assessment, Valorization and Resilience of Tangible Cultural Heritage, Data in Brief (Elsevier), Guest Editor (2025–2026).
• Design for Climate-resilient and Climate-positive Built Environment, Energy and Buildings (Elsevier), Guest Editor (2025–2026). Professor Attia is listed among the Guest Editors together with Bao-Jie He, Gloria Pignatta, Junsong Wang, and Carlos Jimenez-Bescos. The Special Issue is associated with the 5th International Conference of Urban Climate and Urban Design, held in Chongqing, China, from 30 May to 1 June 2025. Its scope connects climate resilience and climate-positive design with urban heat mitigation, whole-life carbon, nature-based solutions, thermal comfort, and artificial intelligence.
• Advancements in Net-Zero-Energy Buildings, Buildings (MDPI), Guest Editor (2025–2026), with Amirhossein Balali, Shen Wei, Antonios Kanellopoulos, Gloria Pignatta, and Hamidreza Alavi. Submission deadline: 20 April 2026.
• Nature-Based Solutions for Climate Change Adaptation and Thermal Comfort in Buildings and Urban Spaces, Sustainability (MDPI), Guest Editor (2025–2026), with Daniel Sánchez-García, Alberto Cerezo-Narváez, and María del Carmen Guerrero Delgado. Submission deadline: 31 October 2026.
• Urban Air Quality, Green Spaces, and Microclimate Analysis, Atmosphere (MDPI), Guest Editor (2025–2026), with Mariella Aquilino. Submission deadline: 31 October 2026.

2026

• Urban Climate Futures: AI and Smart City Solutions, Sustainability in Smart Cities, Guest Editor (2026), with Pengyuan Shen and Sheng Liu. The official Call for Papers lists Professor Attia as Guest Editor. The Special Issue covers AI and machine learning for urban climate modeling, urban heat and climate-risk prediction, smart sensing and IoT, digital twins, urban energy modeling, nature-based solutions, urban decarbonization, and climate-resilient smart cities.
• Land Planning toward Climate Adaptation: Design and Strategy for Urban Heat Island Mitigation, Land (MDPI), Guest Editor, with Atef Ahriz, Waqas Mahar, and Matallah Mohamed Elhadi. Current Special Issue.
• Life Cycle Assessment in the Built Environment: From Method to Decision, BMC Environmental Science, (2026) Guest Editor Shady Attia, with Violeta Motuzienė and Dimitra Papadaki. Current collection covering whole-life and embodied carbon, circularity and material reuse, environmental product declarations, dynamic and prospective LCA, uncertainty and data quality, renovation, BIM, digital twins, AI, life-cycle costing, social LCA, standards, policy, and decision support.

Professor Attia's broader Special Issue portfolio encompasses net-zero and climate-neutral buildings, whole-life carbon assessment, circular construction and circular economy, climate resilience, resilient cooling and overheating mitigation, building performance simulation, adaptive façades, sustainable construction materials, indoor environmental quality, thermal comfort, nature-based solutions, urban microclimates, artificial intelligence, digital twins, and smart cities.

Peer-Review Leadership and Recognition

In addition to his editorial responsibilities, Professor Attia has reviewed more than 550 scientific manuscripts for leading academic publishers, including Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, MDPI, and Sage.

He has been recognized as a top reviewer in architectural engineering by Clarivate Web of Science and ranked among the top 1% of reviewers in engineering by Publons.

Peer Review and Scientific Evaluation

Professor Attia has reviewed more than hundreds of research proposals and funding applications for leading journals, research councils, and international funding agencies worldwide. His scientific evaluation activities include the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), European Commission, European Innovation Council, National Science Centre Poland, French National Research Agency (ANR), Innoviris, VLAIO, Canada Foundation for Innovation, and the Belgian National Science Foundation (FNRS).

Research Profiles

• ORCID: 0000-0002-9477-5098
• Scopus Author ID: 54889787300
• University of Liège Profile
• Sustainable Building Design Lab (SBD Lab)