Noor Alkhalili, a third-year Master of Architecture student at the Daniels Faculty, was singled out for a rare honour late last month. The Ontario Building Envelope Council named her as the recipient of its 2020 OBEC Graduate Research Scholarship.

OBEC, a group that connects professionals from architecture, engineering, construction, and related fields, awards the $1,000 scholarship annually to one graduate student. Recipients must have a record of academic achievement, and they also need to be pursuing research related to building science.

Alkhalili was presented with a framed certificate at a socially distanced award ceremony in November. She says the scholarship is both a personal honour and a reminder that the discipline of building science is becoming more important at Daniels. "I was really happy to have received this scholarship, especially considering that building science is still an emerging topic," she says. "It's not recognized as much as it needs to be, but it is a very important topic in architecture."

Alkhalili has spent her entire graduate career performing building science research. In her first year at Daniels, she worked with professor Ted Kesik on a conference paper about metrics for visual privacy in buildings. She has continued that work, and is now preparing to co-publish a journal article on the topic with Kesik and Terri Peters, an assistant professor at Ryerson University.

In 2019, Alkhalili and fellow MArch student Jing Li co-founded the Daniels Faculty's OBEC student chapter. And Alkhalili has been a TA in several building science courses at Daniels.

"Noor is a gifted student, a dedicated teaching assistant, and a tireless research assistant," Kesik says. "Soon she will graduate and become a valued colleague. Her journey at Daniels is a testament to the dreams that become reality when the hard work of our students is generously sponsored by scholarships and bursaries."

Top image: Noor Alkhalili.