Olga Lauter
University of Texas at El Paso, TX·Engineering
Arctic winters are long and cold, and homes in many Alaska Native communities lose heat through poor insulation, thermal bridges (spots where heat escapes through the structure) and air leaks. Energy in Alaska also often costs more than in the lower 48 states.
- Fields
Engineering
Earth & Environmental Science
Social Science
- Topics
Arctic
Alaska
Indigenous communities
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Sep 2026
What they work on
- Investigate how socio-cultural factors shape housing construction and energy use in two Alaska Native communities in the Bristol Bay region, using needs assessments and community workshops.
- Evaluate how culture and climate affect residential construction and identify the main barriers to building energy-efficient homes in Arctic Indigenous communities.
- Assess how culture and climate influence home design and energy use patterns, and extract the critical factors needed for building energy analysis.
- Predict how future climate change in Alaska could change residential energy use, using building energy modeling and simulation.
More about the research
Climate change adds further strain as temperatures rise and snow and ice melt faster. This project asks how culture, building design and climate together shape energy use in Arctic homes. It also asks how researchers and Indigenous communities can work out better solutions together.
Why it matters
Alaska Native households often live in energy-inefficient homes and face high energy prices, and a warming climate is changing how those homes perform. A framework built with Bristol Bay communities could help identify and design housing and energy solutions that fit their culture and climate, and that other Arctic regions could adapt.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Marie Lowe
University of Alaska Anchorage, AK·Earth & Environmental Science
Estimate riverbank erosion rates in the warming Yukon River basin and their effects on water quality and infrastructure, using numerical landscape evolution models and monitoring stations.
Marya Smith
George Washington University, DC·Earth & Environmental Science
Identify and analyze changes in hydroclimatological conditions — river flow, ice and climate variables — in the Kuskokwim basin of Alaska and the Selenge basin of Mongolia that affect human activities and ecosystem services.
Julie Brigham-Grette
University of Massachusetts, MA·Earth & Environmental Science
Measure and model rates of land change and altered water flow caused by rising sea level and collapsing permafrost across villages and traditional-use landscapes in Alaska's Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.
The school
University of Texas at El Paso: 4 labs on PI Pages, $158M a year on research, 130 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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