Prof Lubo Jankovic
School of Science, Engineering & Environment
Current positions
Professor
Biography
Ljubomir “Lubo” Jankovic has spent the past 35 years focusing on how environmental design of buildings can be improved using dynamic simulation, instrumental performance monitoring and utilisation of bio-based materials.
In September 2024 he was appointed as Professor of Energy & Buildings at Energy House Labs, the world leading energy performance research facility at the University of Salford, where he has a wide research agenda on improving building energy performance and reducing carbon emissions. Between 2018 and 2024, he held a position of Professor of Advanced Building Design at the University of Hertfordshire, UK, where he led a Zero Carbon Lab and was Director of a university-wide transdisciplinary Centre for Future Societies Research. Previously, he was Professor of Zero Carbon Design at Birmingham City University, UK, where he founded a Master’s programme on Zero Carbon Architecture and Retrofit Design. He also taught Behaviour of Complex Systems and Virtual Reality at the University of Birmingham and a short course on Embracing Complexity in Science and Society at the Universities of Liverpool and Salford. He has been a mentor of several PhD dissertations and a PhD Examiner in Spain, India, Pakistan and the UK.
His work on Designing Zero Carbon Buildings has contributed to the industry with monographs published in 2012, 2017, and 2024. His outputs in sustainable retrofitting are based on design and experimental performance evaluation and are widely cited. His work on reducing simulation performance gap has earned him a unique reputation in industry in designing buildings with hempcrete as a construction material. His work on changing the culture of building simulation from top-down to self-organised bottom-up approaches to computational fluid dynamics has introduced new thinking into industry. And his work on non-invasive experimental measurement of building physics properties has introduced a new method for quality control of building retrofit. Lubo’s invention of a new predictive control method for building heating and cooling utilises a compact genetic algorithm for machine learning of building physics properties, runs on a pocket size device and has a 30% energy reduction potential. The above outputs are in the context of £10+million of his research grant funding, with circa 120 publications and 900 citations.
He graduated as a Dipl. Ing. (now an MSc) from the University of Belgrade and was awarded a PhD from the University of Birmingham, both in Mechanical Engineering, having submitted his Doctoral Thesis on Solar Energy Monitoring, Control and Analysis in Buildings. He is a UK Chartered (Licensed) Engineer, a member of CIBSE, a Member of ASHRAE, a Fellow of the Institution of Analysts and Programmers, and a Fellow of the International Building Performance Simulation Association. His ASHRAE membership activities included various chapter roles and positions of President of ASHRAE UK London and Southeast Chapter and Vice-President of ASHRAE UK Chapter. In 2024 he was selected as an ASHRAE Distinguished Lecturer on a two-year term.
Lubo is also an on-going student of applied fluid dynamics, pursued through his role as a certified water ski instructor and a passionate water skier.
Areas of Research
Designing zero carbon buildings
Reducing embodied emissions in buildings
Bio-based materials in construction
Building simulation
Simulation of hard-to-simulate systems
Predictive control
Emergence-based approach to designing
Emergence-based CFD
Machine learning, genetic algorithms and AI in building design and control
Qualifications
-
PhD Mechanical Engineering
1984 - 1988 -
Dipl. Ing. (now MSc) Mechanical Engineering
1976 - 1981
Publications
-
Designing Zero Carbon Buildings: Embodied and Operational Emissions in Achieving True Zero
Jankovic, L. (2024). Designing Zero Carbon Buildings: Embodied and Operational Emissions in Achieving True Zero. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003342342
-
Cumulative Embodied and Operational Emissions of Retrofit in Birmingham Zero Carbon House
Jankovic, L., & Christophers, J. (2022). Cumulative Embodied and Operational Emissions of Retrofit in Birmingham Zero Carbon House. Frontiers in Built Environment, 8, Article 826265. https://doi.org/10.3389/fbuil.2022.826265
-
Experiments with Self-Organised Simulation of Movement of Infectious Aerosols in Buildings
Jankovic, L. (2020). Experiments with Self-Organised Simulation of Movement of Infectious Aerosols in Buildings. Sustainability, 12(12), Article 5204. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12125204
-
Improving Building Energy Efficiency through Measurement of Building Physics Properties Using Dynamic Heating Tests
Jankovic, L. (2019). Improving Building Energy Efficiency through Measurement of Building Physics Properties Using Dynamic Heating Tests. Energies, 12(8), Article 1450. https://doi.org/10.3390/en12081450
-
A simulation method for measuring building physics properties
Jankovic, L. (2019). A simulation method for measuring building physics properties. . https://doi.org/10.26868/25222708.2019.210213