Scott Horowitz
Senior Research Engineer at National Laboratory of the Rockies
Boulder, Colorado, United States
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolScott Horowitz is a senior research engineer with 12+ years advancing residential building energy modeling and software at the National Laboratory of the Rockies (formerly NREL), where he leads development on tools like BEopt, Home Energy Score, HPXML, ResStock, and OpenStudio extensions. He blends deep domain expertise in building physics with hands-on back-end engineering and QA, contributing substantive fixes and features to flagship open-source projects such as EnergyPlus and OpenStudio. His work on core geometry algorithms, unit-tested roof geometry, and energy simulation edge cases demonstrates a focus on robustness and reproducibility in government and industry modeling workflows. Based in Boulder, Scott holds an MS in Civil, Environmental & Architectural Engineering and brings a practical systems mindset to improving accuracy, consistency, and interoperability across BEM toolchains. An often-overlooked strength is his track record of translating research needs into production-ready software that scales for national-level analyses and field programs.
13 years of coding experience
1 year of employment as a software developer
Master of Science - MS Civil Environmental and Architectural Engineering, Master of Science - MS Civil Environmental and Architectural Engineering at University of ColoradoBachelor of Science - BS Mechanical Engineering, Bachelor of Science - BS Mechanical Engineering at Rutgers University
Stackoverflow
1reputation
0reached
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Github Skills (17)
algorithm10
unit-testing10
simulation10
algorithms10
c-language10
simulation-modeling10
geometry10
testing10
simulations10
data-modeling10
3d-modelling10
data-structure10
data-structures10
cprogramming-language10
modeling10
Programming languages (9)
Github contributions (5)
NatLabRockies/EnergyPlus
Sep 2015 - Jul 2022
EnergyPlus™ is a whole building energy simulation program that engineers, architects, and researchers use to model both energy consumption and water use in buildings.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:40 reviews, 25 commits, 32 PRs in 6 years 11 months
Contributions summary:Scott primarily contributed to bug fixes and feature enhancements within the EnergyPlus codebase. Their work involved resolving issues related to the exponential function in the runtime language processor, addressing a bug in PVWatts thin film calculations, and modifying the handling of surfaces in the Kiva manager. They also implemented a new feature by adding an end-use subcategory field for pumps and added unit tests for different pump types.
energyplussimulation
NatLabRockies/OpenStudio
Aug 2017 - Dec 2020
OpenStudio is a cross-platform collection of software tools to support whole building energy modeling using EnergyPlus and advanced daylight analysis using Radiance.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer & QA Engineer / Test Automation Engineer
Back-end Developer & QA Engineer / Test Automation EngineerContributions:29 reviews, 48 commits, 22 PRs in 3 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Scott contributed to the development of whole building energy modeling software tools by implementing new functionalities for the roof geometry calculations, which included the introduction of shed, gable, and hip roof features. They focused on building out the straight skeleton algorithm and writing comprehensive unit tests to validate the correctness of the roof geometry calculations, demonstrating a commitment to quality assurance. Their work involved significant changes to the core geometry-related code, encompassing a series of iterations to refine the implementation and tests. This indicates a focus on building and testing core back-end functionality.
energyplusopenstudioopenstudio-sdk
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