Dr. Zeynep Duygu Tekler is a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on occupant-centric smart building technologies and machine learning approaches to improve energy efficiency and occupant comfort in the built environment. At the ZERO Institute, she contributes to AI-driven net zero solutions, including the development of an open-source building energy simulation tool (OpenBES) to facilitate low-carbon decision-making, as part of Oxford’s EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account.
Before joining Oxford, Dr. Tekler was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore, where she focused on occupant-centric sensing and control strategies for mixed-mode ventilation in buildings. She received the prestigious SINGA scholarship to pursue her PhD at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), where she conducted her research within the SUTD-MIT International Design Centre. During her doctoral studies, she developed Plug-Mate, a patented, occupancy-driven smart energy management system that earned her the SUTD Best Research Project Award in 2021. In addition to her academic achievements, she was the University champion and Asia-Pacific finalist in the 2020 Three Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition.
Dr. Tekler’s research has been published in leading journals such as Building and Environment, Energy and Buildings, and Applied Energy. She actively contributes to several technical committees, including ACM BuildSys and IEEE PES. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) and a Junior Research Fellow at Kellogg College at the University of Oxford.