Xuechen Lei
Buildings Research Engineer at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory - PNNL
Seattle, Washington, United States
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolXuechen Lei is a Buildings Research Engineer at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory with over six years of experience translating advanced building science into practical energy and controls solutions. With a PhD from Carnegie Mellon, he blends deep academic expertise in HVAC systems, building benchmarking, and BAS data analysis with hands-on software development—contributing core daylighting and shading logic to the widely used EnergyPlus simulation engine. His work spans experimental research, postdoctoral projects, and applied engineering, giving him a rare combination of simulation-level coding and field-focused systems insight. Based in Seattle, he is skilled at turning complex building-performance problems into robust, reproducible models and control strategies that improve energy efficiency and occupant comfort.
6 years of coding experience
6 years of employment as a software developer
Master of Engineering (M.Eng.), Architecture and Civil Engineering, Master of Engineering (M.Eng.), Architecture and Civil Engineering at Southeast UniversityDoctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Civil Engineering, Advanced Infrastructure Systems, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Civil Engineering, Advanced Infrastructure Systems at Carnegie Mellon University
Chinese, English
Github Skills (7)
energyplus10
c-language10
cprogramming-language10
algorithms8
data-structures8
algorithm8
data-structure8
Programming languages (6)
Github contributions (5)
NREL/EnergyPlus
Jun 2021 - Aug 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:16 reviews, 37 commits, 1 PR in 1 year 2 months
Contributions summary:Xuechen primarily focused on modifying and extending the core logic of the EnergyPlus simulation program. Their contributions included adding a luminance variable and implementing logic for luminance-based shading control within the daylighting system. They also addressed and fixed bugs, performed cleanup, and added new window shading control options. The user's work involved modifying core source files related to daylighting and solar shading calculations.
renewable-energypower-systemsenergy-consumptionenergy-simulationsimulation
pnnl/ConStrain
Apr 2023 - Mar 2025
ConStrain is a data-driven knowledge-integrated framework that automatically verifies that building system controls function as intended.
Contributions:5 releases, 94 reviews, 61 PRs in 1 year 11 months
bmscommissioningdatahvacsimulation
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