Stephen Samouhos, PhD

Stephen Samouhos has been a member of the MIT community since September, 2000. Over the past nine years, he has participated in a variety of academic and professional activities, all of which were driven by his passion for thermal-fluids engineering and thirst for learning new things.

During most of his undergraduate career, Stephen worked with Professor Ioannis Yannas on human organ regeneration via precision engineered collagen scaffolds. Towards the end of college, Stephen became involved with MIT’s Institute for soldier nanotechnology through his focus on micro and nanotechnologies for power generation. This research eventually developed into a master’s thesis on nanofluid enhanced mass transport and magneto-rheology, under Professor Gareth McKinley. Towards the end of the Masters, Stephen was awarded a Hertz fellowship to pursue the PhD at MIT. Empowered by the Hertz fellowship, Stephen decided to conclude his education at MIT under Professor Leon Glicksman, with PhD research on practical technologies capable of achieving scalable building energy efficiency.

Stephen’s PhD studies are motivated by his desire to create a lasting impact on the global energy and environment crisis. His up-bringing in a New Jersey construction family also provided a few unique perspectives on the problem. Today, Stephen is creating machine intelligence that uses electric utility records and HVAC data to automatically identify and quantify building energy efficiency opportunities at the appliance and building level. His research is being used by MIT and other service contractors to achieve scalable building energy efficiency. Leveraging his family’s mechanical contracting history, Stephen works towards energy efficiency solutions that are technologically innovative, yet practically integrated with the business models of our building industry.