Dr Vishal Garg is a University Chair Professor and Director of the Indorama Ventures Center for Clean Energy. He focuses on energy efficiency in buildings, particularly Smart Energy Homes, where he is developing and field-testing a Smart Home Energy Management System (SHEMS) to evaluate its impact on energy savings and demand reduction. He is also actively involved in policy-making and market research for smart energy homes and is incubating a start-up to bring lab innovations to market. Dr Garg is passionate about mitigating Urban Heat Islands through cool surfaces, which reduce cooling energy consumption and save lives during heatwaves. A recipient of the Dr Arthur Rosenfeld Urban Cooling Achievement Award, he is also a member of AEEE’s Executive Council, for a chapter on sustainability in the National Building Code of India. An active researcher and educator, Dr Garg holds a US patent and is a Fellow of IBPSA-World, IGBC, and ISLE. He teaches courses on Building Energy Simulation and Green Buildings and authored a workbook on energy simulation.