Prof. Ursula Eicker is the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Smart, Sustainable and Resilient Cities and Communities at Concordia University Montreal. She is a German physicist who received her PhD in Solid State Physics from Heriot-Watt University and her Habilitation in Renewable Energy Systems from the Berlin Technical University. Prof. Eicker has held leadership positions at the Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences and its Centre for Sustainable Energy Technologies, and has coordinated many international research projects in the fields of building energy efficiency, renewable energy systems and urban scale simulation.
Since June 2019, she has led an ambitious research program to establish transformation strategies toward zero-carbon cities. Around 50 graduate students work on pathways to zero-carbon cities in the domains of the built environment, renewable energy systems, sustainable transport and circular economy.
Education
1995/6 - 2011/5
Habilitation
Habilitation, Renewable Energy Systems
Technische Universitat Berlin
Degree Status: Completed
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Felix Ziegler, 1995/6 -
1986/9 - 1989/5
Doctorate
PhD Doctor of Philosophy, Solid State Physics
Heriot-Watt University
Degree Status: Completed
Supervisors: Wilson, John, 1986/6 - 1989/5
1985/9 - 1986/6
Master's Equivalent
Diploma Studies, Physics
Technische Universitat Berlin
Degree Status: Completed
Supervisors: Twele, Joachim, 1985/9 - 1986/6
Honours and Awards
2018/5 - 2019/5
German-African Innovation Incentive Award - 130,000 (Euro)
Federal Ministry of Science Germany
Award for outstanding research in cooperation with Egypt on photovoltaic thermal collectors by the Federal Science Ministry
Projects
Eco-Quartier Lachine-Est
In collaboration with a real estate developer company and the municipality of Lachine, Prof. Eicker and her team developed concepts for an Eco-Quartier in the former Dominion Bridge area. The involvement of different professionals, organizations, community groups and the municipality bridged the project from theoretical approaches and scenario simulations to financial and social realization potentials.
Urban Platform (INSEL4Cities)
The Urban Platform, also referred to as INSEL4Cities, is an urban simulation platform currently under development by the CERC team. INSEL is a graphical programming language used for the simulation of renewable energy systems, it offers ready-made simulation models or users can design completely new models for whatever kind of system they are working with. The objective of INSEL4Cities is to offer cities a platform that can be used to model the city in a holistic way, including features such as buildings and their demands, transportation, networks, waste management, and greenery and ecosystem services.
Canadian Energy End-Use Mapping Project
The objective of this project is to create a basis of knowledge on key topics, characterize data workflows and perform selected data cleaning and integration tasks. The work done by CERC primarily supported the development of the CEE Map prototype for Kelowna BC with findings shared with related initiatives such as the Building Energy Mapping and Analytics Concept Development Study (BEMA-CDS). The group of researchers worked on the development of a generic, systematic workflow to extract useful information from various data sources for building energy modeling requirements and energy retrofit recommendations. The developed workflow has leveraged datasets originated from various sources and scales in multi-operational platforms to analyze and derive the building data for building energy modeling and mapping. Property assessment records were used to discover Kelowna patterns and distribution of dwelling type and vintage. The Kelowna permit dataset provided information on the building and heating permits registered by the municipality.
Residential Densification Strategies
Residential densification can significantly contribute toward retrofitting existing communities into resilient positive energy districts. A simulation study was conducted for Québec, to determine the impact of densification on energy and space use and analyze future electricity demand in the Quebec province due to electrification of heating and transport. It was found that by densification g and energy efficiency electricity consumption can be reduced by 65% and photovoltaic (PV) roofs could generate nearly three times more electricity than the houses consumed. The combined effect of energy efficient construction and on-site renewable energy production would enable single home owners to shift from consuming 5,640 kWh/yr to producing 3,540 kWh/yr.
Future City Playgrounds
The CERC team works on an urban gamified simulation platform. It brings together two worlds that deal with 3D urban data handling and merge both approaches' strong points. On the one hand, the world of Computer Games with 3D cities and various responsive scenarios connected to highly engaging storylines and aim to learn, succeed, and get to the next level or another task. On the other hand, the real-world with urban planning, 2D plans, 3D (BIM) and geospatial urban data. The merger of these two worlds with the help of gamification will lead to a prototype for a product enabling different user groups to find a new way to communicate, learn together, and facilitate co-creation processes in the building and urban planning industry. By applying gamification methodologies to digital twins' use for simulations, a new way of planning urban interventions will be possible. This will boost sustainability transformation and maybe even re- invent the city building, urban development processes and the building industry. The work is done in collaboration with the software company Behaviour.
Funding
2019/6 - 2026/5
Research Chair: Canada Excellence Research Chair Smart, Sustainable and Resilient Cities and Communities
10,000,000 (Canadian dollar)
Principal Applicant
2020/2 - 2023/1
Grant, Infrastructure: Next-Generation Cities Laboratory
425,000 (Canadian dollar)
Principal Applicant
2020/6 - 2025/5
Grant: Multiscale urban modeling and monitoring strategies for urban
CO2 reduction
275,000 (Canadian dollar)
Principal Applicant
2020/6 - 2023/5
Grant: Help cities offset the effects of heat islands
100,000 (Canadian dollar)
Principal Applicant
2021/5 - 2022/1
Grant: Assessing Canadian Real-estate Stock for Sustainable Futures
15,000 (Canadian dollar)
Principal Investigator
2020/12 - 2021/3
Contract: Canadian Energy End-use Mapping Project Support
18,400 (Canadian dollar)
Principal Applicant
2020/6 - 2020/9
Contract: Canadian Energy End-use Mapping Project Support
20,000 (Canadian dollar)
Principal Applicant
2020/6 - 2023/5
Grant: La ville extraordinaire
200,000 (Canadian dollar)
Co-applicant
2018/1 - 2022/12
Grant: Innovation laboratory for the Stuttgart metropolitan region (M4_LAB)
12,000,000 (Canadian dollar)
Principal Investigator
2018/9 - 2021/8
Grant: New possibilities for data collection, analysis and impact assessment for the water energy Nexus (NeMDa)
235,500 (Canadian dollar)
Principal Applicant
2017/9 - 2021/8
Grant: Leading project intelligent city: Energy, information, urban development, building, mobility, participation (i_city-Impuls)
6,785,000 (Canadian dollar)
Principal Investigator
2018/6 - 2021/5
Grant: Integrated analysis and modeling for the management of sustainable urban FWE ReSOURCEs (IN-SOURCE)
558,500 (Canadian dollar)
Principal Investigator
2017/1 - 2020/12
Grant: Intelligent city Management project to long-term establish HFT's intelligent city research in the Stuttgart Metropolitan Region (i_city-Management)
564,500 (Canadian dollar)
Principal Investigator
2016/9 - 2020/8
Grant: Simulation Supported Real Time Energy Management in Building Blocks (Sim4Blocks)
8,345,000 (Canadian dollar)
Principal Investigator
2017/9 - 2020/8
Grant: Multi-scale Urban Scenario Interface (i_city-MUSI)
380,000 (Canadian dollar)
Principal Investigator
2017/9 - 2020/8
Grant: Facade integrated Photovoltaic with CIGS technology (CIGS-Facade)
173,500 (Canadian dollar)
Principal Investigator
2017/3 - 2020/7
Grant: Graduate School Windy Cities
169,500 (Canadian dollar)
Principal Investigator
2017/7 - 2020/6
Grant: 3D Simulation of urban Energy Systems (SimStadt 2.0)
1,295,000 (Canadian dollar)
Principal Investigator
2018/6 - 2020/5
Grant: The Adaptability of PhotoVoltaic-Thermal Collectors to Increase the Share of REnewable Energy Production for Heating-, Cooling-, and Electric-Energy in Systems of Buildings (PVT-Resyst)
270,000 (Canadian dollar)
Principal Investigator
2017/4 - 2020/3
Grant: Sustainable Data Centers (EcoRZ)
203,500 (Canadian dollar)
Principal Investigator
2017/1 - 2019/12
Grant: Municipal grid-bound energy supply - Vision 2020 using the example of the municipality of Wüstenrot phase III, Monitoring, operational optimization, analyses and implementation of the electricity grid and expansion of heating networks (EnVisaGE Plus)
1,074,500 (Canadian dollar)
Principal Investigator
2017/1 - 2019/12
Grant: Research scientist support program for Center of Sustainable Energy Technology
417,000 (Canadian dollar)
Principal Applicant
2016/8 - 2019/7
Grant: Graduate School Energy Systems and Resource Efficiency (ENRES)
178,500 (Canadian dollar)
Principal Investigator
2016/9 - 2019/6
Grant: Urban Energy Systems for Zero-carbon Cities; International collaboration and partnership Stuttgart - New York
157,500 (Canadian dollar)
Principal Investigator
2019/3 - 2022/2
Grant: Contracting for social institutions (CoSo)
1,418,000 (Canadian dollar)
Co-investigator
2018/10 - 2021/9
Grant: Energy system analysis - Local energy markets as a link between the regional and central energy system transformation (EnSysLe)
503,000 (Canadian dollar)
Co-investigator
Editorial Activities
2020/1 – 2025/12
Associate Editor, Frontiers in Sustainable Cities, Journal
2010/2 - 2021/1
Associate Editor, Solar Energy, Journal
2018/11 - 2019/11
Guest Editor, Energy and Buildings, Journal
Organizational Review Activities
2019/2 - 2019/11
Conference Chair, International Solar Energy Society
Scientific chair of Solar Air Conditioning Conference Chile 2019 and program concept developer
Knowledge and Technology Translation
2016/2 - 2021/6
Principal investigator, United States
International collaboration with City University, New York University andNew York
Institute of Technology on Food Water Nexus research. Joint project with Belmont Forum for Sustainability
Committee Memberships
2019/06 - 2023/04
Committee Member, Board of Directors of the Institute for Solar Energy Research Hamelin, Research Center
Advise on research strategy in prestigious solar energy research center in the state of Lower Saxony
2019/05 - 2023/04
Committee Member, Member of the Board of Directors for the
International Solar Energy Research Institute, Lower Saxony, Research Center
Board member of research center strategic directions
2016/06 - 2020/07
Committee Member, Board of Directors of the Centre for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden Württemberg, Research Center Strategic decisions and determination of leadership of state research center in Stuttgart
Service to Concordia University Bodies
2020/11 - Present
Founding Co-Director of Next Generation Cities Institute Memberships
2021/09 - Present
Representative for the Global Secretariat Hubs Boards and Funders in Future Earth Governing Council
2021/02 - Present
Member of Expert Committee for Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing
2021/04 - Present
Participant in the Montreal Climate Partnership