I am currently working on the project “Impacts of Home Weatherization on Health.” In this EPA-funded project, I am trying to find a relation between the activity of home energy retrofitting (also called weatherization) of residential dwellings in Colorado and respiratory health of the home occupants. Weatherization refers to increasing the air-tightness of a building shell using techniques such as increasing insulation, sealing off cracks and openings around door and window frames in a house, adding weather stripping around doors and windows, caulking the openings and vents etc. with the motivation of decreasing air infiltration through the building shell and hence reducing heating and cooling costs.

I am originally from Kathmandu, Nepal. I finished my undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from the Institute of Engineering (IoE), Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu with an undergraduate thesis in a project named ‘Design, fabrication and testing of a Stirling Engine’. After finishing college, I worked as a part-time teaching faculty at IoE. Side by side, I also got the opportunity to work for few other research projects like Chlor-Alkali PEM Fuel Cell prototype design, fabrication and testing; a Turpentine oil distillation micro-plant design; Geo-representation of atmospheric emissions inventory in Nepal; and a small-scale horizontal axis wind turbine blade design and fabrication. In the fall of 2012, I got into the PhD program in mechanical engineering at CU Boulder and started working in the Turbulence and Energy Systems Laboratory with Prof. Peter Hamlington, doing simulations of reacting and supersonic flows using the open source software ‘OpenFOAM’. Following my interests in doing more hands-on experimental research, I joined Prof. Shelly Miller’s research group in the summer of 2014.

In my free time, I like to get involved in outdoor activities like hiking and road biking. I also love playing my guitar and trying my hand at sketching, painting and cooking. I was also the advisor of the Nepalese Student Association from 2013 to 2015, and was involved with Engineers Without Borders-USA (Nepal chapter) and Sustainable Tribal Housing program in 2014 here at CU. I aspire in becoming a technical expert in the field of energy systems and environmental sustainability. I am interested in experimental research related to the areas of HVAC, indoor air quality, thermal-fluidic systems design, and building, automotive and aircraft energy systems efficiency improvement within the discipline of mechanical engineering.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateekshrestha