Jim Mathews

Dr. Qingyan “Yan” Chen is the fomer James G. Dwyer Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA. He also served as the Editor-in-Chief of the international journal “Building and Environment”. Dr. Chen was the founding co-Principal Director of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Center of Excellence for Airliner Cabin Environment Research from 2004 to 2010.

Dr. Chen earned his B.Eng. in 1983 from Tsinghua University in China and M. Eng. in 1985 and Ph.D. in 1988 from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. He conducted his post-doctoral research as a Research Scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH-Zurich) and worked as a Project Manager for TNO in the Netherlands. Before he joined Purdue University, he was an Associate Professor at the Delft University of Technology and an Assistant Professor and Associate Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA.

Dr. Chen has many other honorary appointments in his career, such as Honorary Professor at RMIT University in Australia, Otto Mönsted Visiting Professor at the Technical University of Denmark, Professorial Fellow at Cardiff University in the UK, Changjiang Chair Professor at Tianjin University in China, Research Fellow at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, New Millennium Yuelu Outstanding Visiting Professor at Hunan University in China, Adjunct Professor at the Harbin Institute of Technology and Xi’an Jiaotong University in China, Visiting Professor at Helsinki University of Technology in Finland and at Tsinghua University in China, and Guest Professor at Tokyo Polytechnic University in Japan and Southeast University, Dalian University of Technology, Soochow University, Guangzhou University, Central South University, and Hunan University in China. In addition, he has co-supervised Ph.D. students from the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, the University of Cagliari and the University of Padua in Italy, and Queensland University of Technology in Australia.

Dr. Chen’s current research topics include indoor environments; aircraft cabin environments; and energy-efficient, healthy, and sustainable building design and analysis. His research on infectious disease transmission has received a lot of attention as being interviewed by more than 80 media outlets in 10 countries. He has received a total funding exceeding US$24M. He has also published three books, more than 253 journal papers and more than 222 book chapters and conference papers and has been invited to deliver more than 178 lectures internationally. Google Scholar shows that his journal publications have been cited by more than 17,000 times and his H-index is 70.

Dr. Chen was awarded as an honorable member of the Society of Heating, Air-Conditioning and Sanitary Engineers of Japan in 2020. He received the Distinguished Achievement Award for “individuals who have made substantial contributions to the field of building performance simulation over the course of their careers” from International Building Performance Simulation Association (IBPSA) in 2013, the John Rydberg Gold Medal for “outstanding contribution to the advancement of modeling and measurement of ventilation and air distribution in buildings” from the Scandinavian Federation of Heating, Ventilating and Sanitary Engineering Associations in 2011, and the Willis J. Whitfield Award “for significant contributions to the field of contamination control through numerous published papers, studies, and reports” from the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology in 2007.

Chen has also received several technical paper and poster awards and Distinguished and Exceptional Service Awards from the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE). He is a recipient of the CAREER award from the National Science Foundation in the United States and is recognized as a “Well-Known Oversea Chinese” by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is a fellow of the ASHRAE and the International Society of Indoor Air Quality (ISIAQ). Before he became the Editor-in-Chief of the Building and Environment journal, he has served as an associate editor of the HVAC&R Research journal and has also been a member on the editorial boards of several other journals.