STORY: Students Leverage Real Operations Data to Make Sustainability Impact at Olin
“Building Energy & Operations Optimization” is co-taught by Claire Rodgers, Victoria Dean, David Shuman, and Alessandra Ferzoco.
A new course at Olin College has students using real data from the campus’s building automation and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems to lower energy usage and increase efficiency today and into the future.
“Building Energy & Operations Optimization” is an impact-centered learning experience in which students combine campus data with foundations of different engineering specialties—such as data visualization and interpretation, machine learning, thermodynamics, and software design—on various projects around sustainability at Olin.
The idea for the course came about when Claire Rodgers, associate director of sustainability and campus engineering, and Victoria Dean, assistant professor of computer science, were discussing the scale and types of data available from Olin’s building automation system.
“The system includes all the big heating, cooling, and ventilation equipment on campus, and thousands of points of data are being trended every 15 minutes,” says Rodgers, one of the course’s co-instructors. “I thought it could be a great curricular experiment to expose students to this data and give them the opportunity to work with it.”
We had five years of data that students could use to examine trends and create solutions to improve energy efficiency
It’s an interesting control problem, from my background in robotics and machine learning. I could also see its value from a sustainability perspective, so we began to work on a course proposal.
Victoria Dean
Co-Instructor, Assistant Professor of Computer Science
The students in “Building Energy & Operations Optimization” all have access to this data for their various projects. They also take trips into different mechanical spaces around campus to see the equipment in person and take measurements of factors like temperature and CO2 concentration.
“This class is a way to integrate Olin’s curriculum and operations, and at the center of those two things we have learning outcomes for our students,” says David Shuman, professor of data science and applied mathematics and another of the course’s co-instructors. Last year, Shuman also co-taught a pilot course called “Data Science with an Eye Towards Sustainability,” which looked at the macro level of this issue, such as how much the college spends on energy. “’Building Energy & Operations Optimization’ brings it down to the micro level, such as how much energy each fan in a particular building is using at a particular point in a day.”
To round out the course, Dean, Rodgers, and Shuman wanted to bring in someone with expertise in thermodynamics: Enter Alessandra Ferzoco, assistant professor of measurement science.
“This kind of course gives students an opportunity to learn a subject within a context directly relevant to them and with seamless boundaries between other disciplinary approaches,” says Ferzoco, co-instructor of “Building Energy & Operations Optimization”. “They have an opportunity to take responsibility for a system they are a part of, and those moments of accountability can be so powerful for identity development.”
Students and Assistant Professor of Measurement Science, Alessandra Ferzoco looking at HVAC system.
Exploring Olin’s College as a Living Lab Initiative
“Building Energy & Operations Optimization” is part of Olin’s College as a Living Lab (CaLL) sustainability initiative, which allows faculty, students, staff, and external partners to use Olin as an experimental testbed to envision and implement solutions to pressing problems through a sustainability lens.
“For the first several weeks of the fall semester, we worked on a class-wide project learning about the basics of Olin’s HVAC system,” says Shuman. “Small groups focused on different parts, and the work culminated in a poster that we displayed in the dining hall so other members of the Olin community could learn about how everything functions as well.”
Students then completed their final projects, working in four groups on themes that align with Olin’s larger Climate Action Plan. Topics include sizing and selecting new boilers as part of decarbonizing the campus by 2029; creating fault detection software that informs the Facilities team about malfunctioning equipment and identifies equipment that could be running more efficiently; optimizing build-wide air handler units for added efficiency; and analyzing the thermal comfort and occupancy schedules of individual offices.
“All of the projects are working towards advancing various goals within the Climate Action Plan, such as reducing electricity use, reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, and making sure existing equipment functions properly so it uses as little energy as possible,” says Rodgers. “We’ve heard some students say that whatever kind of engineering they enjoy—such as software design or machine learning—‘isn’t a sustainability job.’ We’re hoping to show them that every discipline can play an important and interconnected role in creating a more sustainable and just world.”
“It was really impactful to have so many faculty in the course who all brought different expertise and worked with us as co-learners,” says Ike Walker ’26, a mechanical engineering major with a focus on sustainability who worked on the fault detection software team last semester. “I also really appreciated how the process of problem-solving felt like the next step in project-based learning.”
Students looking into the HVAC system.
The real-world learning element of “Building Energy & Operations Optimization” is important to both faculty and students.
“By introducing students to the ways in which different kinds of engineering are all a part of driving sustainability, we’re helping them shape their identities as engineers and how they can impact the world,” says Shuman. “In the process, they’re also learning about the complexity of getting things done in the real world, which is incredibly useful when they start internships and jobs after graduation.”
“I saw this class as an opportunity to work with real-world problems; if we worked at an HVAC optimization company, this is exactly the job we would be doing,” says Sohum Kothavade ’26, an engineering major with a concentration in robotics, who also worked on the fault detection software team. “This project was also influential in showing me how to approach entrenched system engineering problems—considering an existing system and deciding how we could most effectively work around and with it. This kind of approach applies broadly across all types of engineering.”
Dean, Rodgers, Shuman, and Ferzoco are continuing to teach “Building Energy & Operations Optimization” in the spring semester; some of last semester’s students have continued on, and some new ones have entered the class and begun working on the existing projects.