Jonathan Grinham is a Lecturer in Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Research Associate with the Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities, Research Fellow with the Aizenberg Lab at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Science, and Participating Faculty with the Laboratory for Design Technologies. Jonathan's research asks how the design of conventional and emerging material technologies combats climate change through the draw-down of operational and embodied carbon emissions in buildings and society. This question has sparked the development of novel technologies, publications, and patents that address low-carbon building solutions. Highlighted research includes translating emerging technologies from the sciences to thin-film cooling systems and nano-scale thermal tuning for evaporative cooling in building. His research also looks at how conventional materials can be used to improve buoyancy-driven ventilation and how to design mass timber buildings to improve full life cycle operational and embodied carbon. These topics are complemented by Jonathan's other research interests that track themes in computational design, embedded computation, robotics, and automated fabrication workflows. Jonathan’s research has gained recognition through numerous funding awards, including the Harvard Climate Change Solutions Fund, the DOE Advanced Building and Construction program, and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering's Validation Project program. Jonathan received his Doctorate of Design degree (DDes) at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He holds a BArch and MS from the College of Architecture and Urban Planning at Virginia Tech.
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