Bio
Dr. Zhang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at Lassonde. His primary teaching and research focus is on building science, which includes embodied and operational carbon in buildings, sustainable building materials, and high-performance building envelopes. As climate change begins to affect the resilience of our buildings from extreme weather events, it is ever more important to reduce our carbon emissions through better buildings. Part of the challenges lay in the market incentives, and others lay in the behaviour of construction materials in highly airtight and complicated envelopes.
Dr. Zhang received his PhD from Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University) in 2020 and his MEng and BASc from the University of Toronto in 2012 and 2011. Between his graduate degrees and after his PhD, Kevin worked in building envelope consulting, gaining valuable hands-on experience with design and carbon analysis – sometimes while hanging off the side of buildings. He hopes to leverage his industry network for live data collection and to build partnerships.
If you have a building envelope background and are interested in graduate studies, please email Dr. Zhang and include a statement outlining your experience, your research interests and goals, and one interesting life-changing story.
Research Interests
- Embodied and operational carbon in buildings
- Adaptive reuse
- Heritage masonry
- High performance building envelopes
Selected Publications
- K. Zhang and R. Richman, “Parametric analysis of moisture sorption isotherms for wood sheathing using hygrothermal modelling,” J. Build. Eng., p. 101047, Nov. 2019, doi: 10.1016/j.jobe.2019.101047.
- K. Zhang and R. Richman, “Variability in Moisture Sorption Isotherms of Plywood and Oriented Strand Board with Accelerated Ageing,” Can. J. Civ. Eng., Jul. 2020, doi: 10.1139/cjce-2020-0249.
- K. Zhang and R. Richman, “Wood sheathing durability from moisture sorption isotherm variability due to age and temperature,” Constr. Build. Mater., vol. 273, p. 121672, Mar. 2021, doi: 10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2020.121672.
