Alessandra Luna Navarro is Assistant Professor in Building Design and Engineering at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft (The Netherlands), where she leads the MATELab and SMARTLab research laboratories.
Her research focuses on human–building interaction, investigating how the design, operation and management of buildings influence people's health, well-being, behaviour and resilience. Working at the intersection of building physics, environmental psychology, physiology and information engineering, she develops methods and design strategies for buildings that are more sustainable, inclusive, resilient and responsive to diverse human needs. Her research spans human-centred and adaptive buildings, climate resilience, user acceptance of circular building materials and technologies, and regenerative built environments.
She is the author of more than thirty peer-reviewed scientific publications, and data developed through her research have been incorporated into the CIBSE TM68 technical standard and applied by international design practices. She has received several distinctions, including the Best Young Researcher Award at the 9th International Building Physics Conference (2024) and the Future Cities Fellowship from the University of Cambridge.
She graduated with honours in Building Engineering and Architecture from La Sapienza University of Rome (2013), and holds an MPhil in Energy Technologies and a PhD in Engineering from the University of Cambridge (2021), where her doctoral research focused on occupant-centred façade design and operation. She has been a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley (Blanceflor Fellowship) and Politecnico di Milano (NEST Fellowship). She is a registered civil engineer in Italy and a Chartered Building Services Engineer (MCIBSE) in the United Kingdom.
She coordinates several international research projects as Principal Investigator or Work Package Leader, including the Horizon Europe projects Smarteestory and Multicare, the Erasmus+ project OpenFace, and NWO-funded projects on climate resilience. She holds scientific coordination roles within the International Energy Agency EBC initiative, contributing to international standards while bridging scientific evidence, industrial innovation and public policy. At TU Delft she supervises five PhD candidates and one post-doc and is actively engaged in science communication and citizen science initiatives supporting climate action. She is editor of the Journal of Façade Design and Engineering and the Springer Journal Glass Structures and Engineering, and board member of the Young Delft Academy.