Dr Mahsa Sayfikar is a Research Associate in the Urban Energy Research Group at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. Since February 2025, she has worked on the Biochar in the Built Environment project, which examines how biochar-enhanced construction materials can support low-carbon building. Using IES-VE dynamic thermal models of case-study buildings, she measures how these materials affect operational energy and carbon, and assesses their upfront embodied carbon to guide material choices. She has also examined how the UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard accounts for low-carbon materials and found instances where regulatory methods understate their real performance benefits. She presented this work at the CIBSE Technical Symposium 2026 and at iBioIC’s Biobased Construction Materials Landscape Workshop. She also participated in the project’s stakeholder consultations with manufacturers, construction professionals, and policy advisors.
Mahsa holds a PhD in building performance simulation from Heriot-Watt, funded by a James Watt Scholarship. Her doctoral research focused on the role of occupancy in building simulation, using measured occupancy and energy data to improve simulation models so they better reflect how buildings perform in use. She trained as a mechanical engineer and has around ten years’ experience across HVAC design, energy auditing, and dynamic thermal modelling. Her earlier research includes a Horizon-funded project (crossCert- a Europe-wide comparison of EPC methodologies), and optimisation of solar refrigeration systems, which were published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at several conferences. Since 2019, she has been involved in teaching IES-VE modelling and building services tutorials at Heriot-Watt. She is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA) and a Graduate Member of CIBSE.