Diana Lemian, representing REHVA and Europe, won the 2026 HVAC World Student Competition with research on developing a digital twin for a thermal manikin used to evaluate indoor environmental quality. Lemian is from the Technical University of Civil Engineering of Bucharest.
The competition was held on 29 June in Texas in collaboration with ASHRAE and was sponsored by Eurovent Certita Certification. Five finalists were selected by SHASE in Japan, CAHVAC in China, SAREK in Korea, ASHRAE in the USA and REHVA in Europe.
Chenwei Peng, representing CAHVAC, placed second with research on dynamic inversion-enabled smart drilling for enhanced heat extraction in medium-depth geothermal borehole systems. Mana Kobayashi of SHASE placed third with a multi-objective optimization study of flexible photovoltaic façades considering pedestrian wind and also received the Best Poster award.
The other finalists were Sang Yoon Kim of SAREK, who presented a self-powered occupant-centric airflow control system, and Felix Ekuful of ASHRAE, who presented a comparative study of occupancy-based dynamic ventilation reset strategies.
The jury, chaired by Livio Mazzarella, assessed technical relevance, objectives, methodology, validity of results, innovation, written and oral communication, graphic quality, and each candidate’s ability to defend their work during questioning.