ENVIRONMENTAL SYSTEMS · SUNY ESF

Alireza
Khodayarkhani

Researcher — Engineer — Builder — Artist

I build sensors, run simulations, and study how buildings and cities breathe — bringing a decade of mechanical & CFD engineering into environmental research on indoor air quality, urban microclimate, and building resilience.

FIG. 01 — FOCUS AREAS

Research Focus

SENSING / IOT

Environmental Sensing & IoT

Multi-sensor hardware — including a 12-sensor ESP32 air-quality box and LoRaWAN PIR occupancy network — validated against real-world ground truth.

SIMULATION

Urban Microclimate & Air Quality

ENVI-met modeling of highway pollution dispersion and green-infrastructure mitigation around the SUNY ESF campus corridor.

BUILDING SCIENCE

Resilience & Building Science

Chapter and figure contributions to Green Building Illustrated (3rd ed.), on passive survivability and indoor air quality under adverse conditions.

CFD / THERMAL

Computational & Thermal Systems

A decade of CFD-driven mechanical design in Ansys Fluent — from HVAC systems to a smart evaporative cooling platform cutting energy use by 30%.

FIG. 02 — SELECTED WORK

Projects

SENSING & IOT — 2025–2026

Home Occupancy Detection

A LoRaWAN PIR sensor network paired with a state-machine algorithm to detect home occupancy, validated against Google Maps Timeline as ground truth.

  • 94.97% accuracy
  • 95.73% F1 score
  • 66 days validated

SENSING & IOT — 2025–2026

AQD Environmental Sensor Box

An ESP32-based air-quality device integrating twelve sensors — particulate matter, gases, wind, light, temperature/humidity — with live Firebase logging and a real-time web dashboard.

  • 12 sensors
  • ESP32 core
  • Live dashboard

SIMULATION — 2026

I-81 Highway Air Quality Study

ENVI-met simulation of traffic-related pollution dispersion along the I-81 corridor adjacent to SUNY ESF, modeling green-space removal and restoration scenarios at 2m resolution.

  • 50×50×16 domain
  • 2m resolution
  • ENVI-met v5

PUBLISHING — 2026

Green Building Illustrated, 3rd Ed.

Contributing chapter content and technical figures with Prof. Ian Shapiro and illustrator Frank Ching, covering resilience, passive survivability, and shelter-in-place design.

  • 86 figures
  • Ch. 16 complete
  • Wiley

FIG. 03 — BACKGROUND

About

I'm a graduate Research Assistant at SUNY ESF's Baker Lab in Syracuse, NY, working under Prof. Shayan Mirzabeigi, and beginning a Master's program at SUNY ESF in August 2026. Before moving into environmental research, I spent over a decade in mechanical design, CFD, and project management — designing HVAC systems, running Ansys Fluent simulations, and managing engineering teams in Tehran. That background now shapes how I approach environmental sensing and building science: as systems to be measured, modeled, and improved.

Experience

  1. SEP 2025 — PRESENT

    Research Assistant, Thermal & Environmental Systems

    SUNY ESF · Baker Lab

  2. AUG 2024 — AUG 2025

    Research Assistant, Thermal & Environmental Systems

    SyracuseCoE

  3. JUL 2020 — AUG 2023

    Company Manager

    AIROMAX

  4. JUL 2020 — AUG 2023

    Mechanical Designer, CFD Analyst & Project Manager

    ElectroMotoTech — led development of a Smart Evaporative Cooling System (30% energy reduction, 25% water savings)

  5. JUN 2009 — JUN 2020

    Mechanical Design Engineer

    Havayar Industrial Group

Education

  1. AUG 2026 —

    M.S., Environmental Science incoming

    SUNY College of Environmental Science & Forestry

  2. 2013 — 2015

    M.S., Aerospace & Aeronautical Engineering

    K. N. Toosi University of Technology

  3. 2007 — 2012

    B.S., Mechanical Engineering

    Islamic Azad University

Tools & Methods

FIG. 04 — BEYOND THE LAB

Art & Life

Sacred Geometry, in Marker

Outside of research, I draw detailed geometric compositions in marker on black canvas — including a full reproduction of the Notre-Dame rose window. The same precision that goes into a state-machine algorithm or a CFD mesh shows up here as radial symmetry and pattern. I'm currently developing a "Sacred Geometry" series exploring Gothic rose windows and Islamic geometric tilework.

On Two Wheels, and on the Pitch

I ride regularly and follow soccer closely — both a counterbalance to long stretches at a workstation and, if I'm honest, another kind of systems thinking: pacing, positioning, reading a changing field in real time.