Zakia is a Research Fellow at the Future Industries Institute, UniSA. She is a professional member of Engineers Australia. With over 11 years of experience, she has worked in various organisations, including universities, industries, and research organisations.
Her research primarily focuses on intelligent building operation, performance and control systems, demand-side management, and human interaction within the built environment. She has a strong background in building physics and energy management systems, with in-depth knowledge in specific areas such as building energy modelling, demand flexibility, demand-controlled ventilation, green building technologies, building energy performance evaluation, building automation and control systems, energy benchmarking and certification systems, among others. She has authored or co-authored 20 refereed journal articles and conference papers, including an ASHRAE magazine article.
She obtained PhD in Engineering and Energy from Murdoch University, Western Australia, in 2020. Her research concentrated on improving the performance of building Heating, Ventilation and Air-conditioning (HVAC) systems in commercial buildings by optimising their energy usage while maintaining indoor environmental conditions. She developed an optimal control setting for HVAC systems considering seasonal variations in the context of extreme weather conditions in WA.
Prior to joining the University of South Australia, she spent three years as a research scientist at CSIRO Energy Centre. During her time there, she was involved in strategic projects and led studies on energy flexibility for HVAC systems in commercial buildings. She developed a set of representative building and HVAC system models for three building typologies, which can serve as essential demand response tools for Australian non-residential buildings. Her research contributed to the advancement of building energy modelling and the sustainability and resilience of the built environment.
She also worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Carleton University for one year and three months (Oct 2019 - Jan 2021), where she was part of a data-driven building operation and maintenance research group. She led a Natural Resources Canada-funded multi-stakeholder research project titled "Next Generation Actionable Building Energy Performance Metrics, Data Analytics, and Visualisation: An Open-source Platform" during this time.
She has one year of experience in tutoring, demonstrating, and coordinating subjects in various engineering fields, including Sustainable Urban Design and Development, Energy Management, and Design Concepts in Engineering from the University of Technology Sydney and Murdoch University.
Her current research focuses on system-level modelling of Hybrid HVAC systems in residential settings, aiming to provide valuable insights into the energy flexibility characteristics of residential buildings by integrating the performance characteristics of heat pumps for different designs within the whole building model.