Andrew Sonta

At the intersection of engineering and design, Andrew Sonta studies what makes our buildings and cities more environmentally friendly and better able to meet our needs. He has published his research in proceedings and journals spanning computer science, civil engineering, and energy efficiency. At USF, he teaches Environmental Control Systems, a course focused on minimizing the active energy requirements for buildings through passive design.

Sonta is currently a research fellow at Stanford University, where he also created a seminar and speaker series that takes on a different aspect of environmental sustainability each term. Meet him for a cup of coffee and a deeper discussion than you thought possible on sidewalks and walkability—or just your new favorite album.

• MS, Civil Engineering, Stanford University
• BS, Civil Engineering, Northwestern University

• A. J. Sonta and R. K. Jain. (in press). “Building relationships: Using embedded plug load sensors for occupant network inference,” IEEE Embedded Systems Letters. [Invited Paper]

• A. J. Sonta and R. K. Jain. (in press). “Data-driven building layout optimization for energy efficiency,” in Energy Procedia, (Vasteras, Sweden), Elsevier.

• A. J. Sonta and R. K. Jain. (2019). “Optimizing neighborhood-scale walkability,” in International Conference on Computing in Civil Engineering, (Atlanta, GA), pp. 454-461, American Society of Civil Engineers.

• A. J. Sonta, P. E. Simmons, and R. K. Jain. (2018). “Understanding building occupant activities at scale: An integrated knowledge-based and data-driven approach,” Advanced Engineering Informatics, 37, 1–13.

• A. J. Sonta, R. K. Jain, R. Gulbinas, J. M. F. Moura, and J. E. Taylor. (2017) “OESPG: Computational framework for multidimensional analysis of occupant energy use data in commercial buildings,” Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering, 31, 04017017.