Nafsika is currently in the final year of a PhD in the area of Daylighting (Loughborough University, UK) and enjoys developing real world research skills, as well as exploring user-centred aspects of the built environment.

With a Civil Engineering background (University of the Philippines 2003, DMC Inc. scholarship) and work experience in diverse industries in Greece, the Philippines and the US, she completed an MSc in Low Carbon Building Design & Modelling (Loughborough University, UK, 2010). Her dissertation employed building simulation tools to examine the change in the trade-off between visual and thermal comfort in a Mediterranean vernacular education building pre and post refurbishment. Nafsika then joined Portsmouth University School of Architecture as a Research Assistant for SILCS (Strategies for Innovative Low Carbon Settlements), an EU funded project between the UK, the Netherlands and Spain. In 2013, she completed the MRes in Energy Demand Studies with a dissertation project utilising CFD simulation to investigate the indoor air quality compliance of refurbishment options for a Victorian classroom, and to predict their subsequent thermal comfort and energy demand implications.

Nafsika‘s main objective is to offer a nuanced approach to the question: “Technology has improved the materials, systems and modelling tools used in the built environment; why haven’t we been able to move forward in terms of predicting actual energy performance and reducing energy consumption?”. Currently in the third year of her PhD, she believes the answer lies within the overlap of technical and behavioural aspects of the problem and that mixed method approaches have the potential to improve our understanding of this complex issue.

Publications:

Drosou N., Haines V., Mardaljevic J., Brembilla E., (2016). ‘Let there be daylight? Assessing actual daylighting performance of a classroom in use’. 4th European Conference on Behaviour and Energy Efficiency (BEHAVE), Coimbra, Portugal, 8-9 September 2016. Available at: https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/22482

Drosou N., Brembilla E., Mardaljevic J., Haines V., (2016). ‘Reality bites: measuring actual daylighting performance in classrooms’. 32nd Passive and Low Energy Architecture (PLEA) Conference, Los Angeles, USA, 11-13 July 2016. Available at: https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/21757

Brembilla E., Drosou N., Mardaljevic J., (2016). ‘Real world complexity in reflectance value measurement for climate-based daylight modelling’. 3rd IBPSA – England Conference Building Simulation and Optimization (BSO), Newcastle, UK, 12-14 September 2016. Available at: https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/22275

Mardaljevic, J., Brembilla, E., & Drosou, N. (2016). ‘Real-World Validation of Climate-Based Daylight Metrics: Mission Impossible?’. 6th CIBSE Technical Symposium, Edinburgh, UK, 14-15 April 2015. Available at: https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/21124

Drosou, N., Mardaljevic, J., Haines, V. (2015). ‘Uncharted territory: daylight performance and occupant behaviour in a live classroom environment’. 6th VELUX Daylight Symposium, London, 2-3 September 2015. Available at: https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/19652

Mardaljevic, J., Brembilla, E., & Drosou, N. (2015). ‘Illuminance-proxy high dynamic range imaging : a simple method to measure surface reflectance’. In Proceedings of 28th International Commission on Illumination (CIE) Session (pp. 363–372). Manchester, United Kingdom, 2015. Available at: https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/19992

Drosou, N. (2013). ‘Can Indoor Air Quality in Victorian classrooms satisfy government stipulated requirements?’ Proceedings of 3rd People and Buildings Conference, Network for Comfort and Energy Use in Buildings, London, UK, 2013. Available at: http://nceub.org.uk/mc2013/pdf/mc2013-p46_drosou_nafsika.pdf