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*PhD research fellowship in CEA LIST (Paris, France)- Software tools for 
building design support*
*Context:*
The CEA is the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission. 
Leader in research, development and innovation with its 16000 employees, 
CEA is active in four main areas: low-carbon energies, defence and 
security, information technologies and health technologies.
The LADIS lab of CEA LIST institute has gained a deep expertise in the 
area of software solutions for building design support (building 
information modelling, simulation tools, interoperability in the 
building life cycle). This research thread, while still quite recent, is 
already very active and well integrated in the related European research 
area. Thanks to the various outstanding academic partnerships we have 
developed, the coming years are very promising, with several National 
and European collaborative projects.
At LADIS, PhD supervisors are seeking for suitable students and are 
currently accepting applications from PhD students for the project 
entitled:  BIM-based design quality and optimality assessment. 
Applicants must hold a university degree that can be accepted by the 
partner universities for registration as a PhD student. We offer 
positions to PhD students who wish to prepare a thesis after completing 
their postgraduate studies. These students are enrolled in a doctoral 
program and assigned to LADIS under a three-year contract.
*Summary:*
Building Information Models (BIM) provide a rich representation of 
buildings that can be used during all the project phases.  BIM can be 
used to automate many difficult and error prone tasks, especially during 
the project design phase.  One of these tasks is quantifying and 
measuring building design quality and optimality for making design 
decisions. These decisions, when performed by a designer, are often made 
in a subjective way, and highly depend on the designers’ specific 
experience, intents, and subjectivity [2, 3]. While designers’ skills 
are not questioned here, our belief is that the benefits that they could 
draw from automatic, objective, and quantified assessment of their 
design choices are significant.
The issue here is to be able to provide an automatic, objective, and 
meaningful feedback to designers, while they are investigating design 
options and to highlight related benefits, drawbacks and side effects.
This project proposes applying decision-support techniques to building 
design and to devise a decision-making tool for optimal building design. 
The following categories of design quality criteria will be investigated:
-        Energy efficiency and optimality
-        Comfort and user satisfaction
-        Automated compliance checking against applicable regulations 
and standards
-        Design recommendations and decision support

For each of these, the objective will be to define a set of indicators 
and investigate the best approaches to generate these indicators from 
BIM (IFC model). While some quality criteria may translate into 
quantifiable indicators (e.g. energy consumption), some are 
intrinsically subjective (e.g. comfort). One challenge will be therefore 
to be able to express the various types of indicators, and to give 
meaningful feedback to designers. In this respect, fuzzy logic could be 
considered as a relevant paradigm – also, probabilistic approaches could 
be part of the solution.
*Application:*
To apply for this vacancy, please send email to Hassan Sleiman 
([log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>) and Sylvain 
Robert ([log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>) with your 
curriculum vitae and a letter of motivation.
*Application deadline: *
The position is open until it is filled. As a first step you need to 
send us the requested documents. We will review your CV based on the 
information you provide and contact you with further questions and 
information. To apply for this vacancy, please ensure you meet all 
eligibility and entrance requirements as PhD student.




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