Bilec's Built Environment & Sustainable Engineering Group

Melissa M. Bilec
PhD, LEED AP
mbilec@pitt.edu

William Kepler Whiteford
Professor 
Civil & Environmental Engineering
Co-Director
Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation

Dr. Bilec's focuses on the sustainable built environment.  She is committed to exploring how the built environment can be an integral part of climate change solutions.  She views the world and her research using a systems-level approach, as she is an expert in the life cycle assessment.  Using this view, she integrates critical built environment modeling approaches from building energy modeling to indoor air quality to develop robust strategies to mitigate climate change and deleterious environmental and human health impacts.  Most recently, she is working to solve the global waste challenge through the advancement and development of circular economy principles, since the built environment is a major consumer of resources and producer of waste.

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Post Docs

Ph.D. and M.S. Students

Undergraduate Students

Former Students & Post Docs

Haley Gardner

former

MS Student

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now

ILFI

Harold Rickenbacker

former

PhD Student

​

now

Environmental Defense Fund

Cassandra Thiel

former

PhD, Post Doc

​

now

Assistant Professor 

Langone School of Medicine​

New York University

Kevin Ketchman

former

PhD Student

now

Managing Consultant 

Opinion Dynamics

Nicole Campion

former

PhD Student

now

Associate Engineer 

Delaware River Port Authority

Bill Collinge

former

PhD, Post Doc

now

Research 

Bayer/Covestro

Alexander Dale

former

PhD Student

​

now

Community Relations Sr. Officer

MIT Solve
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Sami Al-Ghamdi

former

PhD Student

​

now

Assistant Professor 

College of Science and Engineering

Hamad Bin Khalifa University

Scott Shrake

former

PhD Student

​

now

Director at EPICS 

Arizona State University

Abdul-Aziz Banawi

former

PhD Student

​

now

Department Chair 

King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Neethi Rajagopalan

former

PhD Student

​

now

Researcher 

Department of Forest Biomaterials​

North Carolina State University

Christi Saunders

former

Masters Student

​

now

Virtual Construction Engineer 

Mascaro Construction Company

Can Aktas

former

PhD Student

​

now

Assistant Professor 

Tagliatela College of Engineering

University of New Haven

Briana Niblick

former

PhD Student

​

now

Environmental Engineer 

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Dr. Fernanda Cruz Rios Ford
former
Post-Doctoral Fellow
now
Interviewing

Shen Tian

former

PhD Student

​

now

Covestro

Vaclav Hasik

former

PhD Student

​

now

UrbanFabrick

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Dr. Sila Temizel
former
Post-Doctoral Fellow
now
LCA consultant