Burcin Becerik-Gerber

Burcin Becerik-Gerber is a Turkish-American civil engineer and educator who studies the interfaces between people and the built environment. She is Dean’s Professor and Chair of the Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC), where she directs the Center for Intelligent Environments (CENTIENTS) and founded the Innovation in Integrated Informatics Lab (I³ Lab).^[1]

Burcin Becerik-Gerber
Born	İzmir, Turkey
Citizenship	Turkey; United States
Alma mater	Istanbul Technical University (BSc) University of California, Berkeley (MSc) Harvard University (DDes)
Known for	Founding the field of human-building interaction
Scientific career
Fields	Civil engineering; building informatics; human–building interaction
Institutions	University of Southern California
Thesis	“Intelligent building systems: technologies, adoption and impacts on project delivery”  (2006)

Early life and education

Becerik-Gerber was born in İzmir, Turkey, and received a BSc in civil engineering from Istanbul Technical University in 1999.^[1] She moved to the United States for graduate study, earning an MSc in engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 2002, followed by a Doctor of Design degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2006.^[2]

Career

After completing her doctorate, Becerik-Gerber spent two years as a management consultant with Camp Dresser & McKee working on infrastructure projects (2006–2008). She joined USC in 2008 as an assistant professor in civil and environmental engineering, became an associate professor in 2015 and full professor in 2019, and was named Dean’s Professor in 2020.^[1] She was appointed department chair in July 2021 and, in 2024, senior research fellow at USC’s Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Threats and Emergencies (CREATE).^[3]

Research

Becerik-Gerber coined the term “human-building interaction” to describe research that treats buildings and their users as a coupled system. Her group develops adaptive building automation, smart workstations and conversational agent interfaces that learn from human behaviour and respond in real time to support well-being, energy efficiency and resilience.^[4] Her work integrates psychology, computer vision, Internet-of-Things sensing and control theory, positioning her as a leading voice in people-centred AI for the built environment.^[5]

Awards and honours

Becerik-Gerber’s contributions have been recognised by the MIT Technology Review TR-35 honour (2012), a NSF CAREER Award (2014), a Rutherford Visiting Fellowship at the Alan Turing Institute (2018) and election to the U.S. National Academy of Construction (2021).^[6][7] She received the LA Area Emmy Award in 2022 as a co-producer of Lives, Not Grades, a documentary chronicling a USC design-build course targeting global challenges.^[8] The American Society of Civil Engineers honoured her with its Computing in Civil Engineering Award (2023) and the Peurifoy Construction Research Award (2024).^[9]

Selected works

Ahmadi-Karvigh, S., Becerik-Gerber, B. & Soibelman, L. (2019). “Intelligent adaptive automation: an activity-driven and user-centred framework.” Energy and Buildings 188–189: 184–199.

Khashe, S., Lucas, G., Becerik-Gerber, B. & Gratch, J. (2018). “Establishing social dialog between buildings and their users.” International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction 35 (17): 1545–1556.

Aryal, A., Anselmo, F., Becerik-Gerber, B., Roll, S. & Lucas, G. M. (2019). “Smart desks to promote comfort, health and productivity in offices.” Frontiers in Built Environment 5: 76.