Academician Support Team
Dr. Birol I. Kilkis
Fellow ASHRAE, Distinguished Lecturer, Exceptional Service and Distinguished Service Awards
WADE Country Manager Turkey
Professor Baskent University Turkey
Honored Member, America's Registry of Outstanding Professionals
Dr. Kilkis received his Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering with high honors from Middle East Technical University. He graduated in 1972 with honors from the prestigious von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics in Belgium- a NATO Research Center. Dr. Kilkis has been working on heat transfer, unified heat transfer theory, high-performance buildings, quantum mechanics, fluid dynamics, heat pumps, energy strategies, exergy analysis, combined heat and power, modeling, simulation, and computer aided design of heating and air-conditioning systems since 1971. With Prof. Kaftanoglu, Dr. Kilkis had developed the first successful and complete CAD program for heating systems for buildings in 1972 on an IBM 360 computer. Since then, he has been very active in wind and solar energy, radiant panel heating and cooling, heat pumps, small hydro-turbines, green energy, sustainable buildings, innovative HVAC systems, geothermal energy, environmental issues, low-exergy and waste heat utilization, district energy systems, and green habitat optimization. He has developed seven standards on Heat Pumps, three standards on Radiant Panel Heating and Cooling, and authored the revised Chapter 6 in ASHRAE Handbook on Radiant Panel Heating and Cooling and three other chapters as the principal reviewer.
He is the Engineering Track Member of USGBC and has developed several green energy bundles and equipment that can operate directly with low-temperature sources and waste heat. He taught graduate and undergraduate courses in several universities like Gannon University (full time), University of Missouri Rolla (adjunct) and Middle East Technical University (full time) since 1972. He holds a full professorship in Mechanical Engineering. Since 1994, he has been very influential in developing the fundamental theory of Hybrid (Forced Air/Radiant) HVAC Systems and has authored 23 peer-reviewed articles on this subject only. In total, he has published more than 280 papers in several journals and proceedings on a large variety of topics, and has several patents pending on green buildings, solar trigeneration, heat pump coupled cogeneration, and low-exergy HVAC systems. He had also contributed articles to IEA Heat Pump Letter, observer to IEA Heat Pump Center.
Currently, Dr. Kilkis is the member of ASHRAE Building Performance Metrics Steering Committee and has
been elevated to Fellow Grade in 2003 due to his outstanding services and has been named distinguished
lecturer. Since 1972, he has been the principal investigator of several industrial projects, including a NATO
Science for Stability project on a de-centralized 1.5 MW fluidized-bed power plant. He had been a contractor to
DOE, Morgantown Energy Technology Center in West Virginia twice. Between 1998 and 1999, he acted as the
project principal for snow melting systems for Air Force air bases, heat tracing of fighter jet aircraft during
freezing periods and snow/ice melting of helicopter pads on Navy Vessels. He has been working on several
commercial projects too, ranging from aircraft hangar heating, paint shop heating, animal shed and zoo floor
warming, ice protection, hybrid HVAC systems using heat pumps and 20,000 home geothermal district energy
systems. Dr. Kilkis was always charged with the most challenging radiant projects and has worked on more than 250 unique projects. He was named a world expert on radiant technology and a lecturer-member of Radiant Panel Association. He is the invited editor of UNESCO Int. Journal of Global Energy Issues and he is the editorial board member of International Journal of Green Energy, International Journal of Exergy, and COSSP Regional Editor. He is the North America Liaison of the Low-Exergy Buildings International Network and the founder of Exergy Analysis for Sustainable Buildings Technical Group in ASHRAE. He is the Project Liaison of EU HEGEL Poly-generation project. Recently he has designed and supervised the construction of two green office building projects for de-centralized energy modeling in Ankara Turkey.