Biography:

Roberto Barrella was born in Rome in 1992. He obtained a Bachelor's Degree in Energy Engineering in 2015 and a Master's degree in Energy Engineering in 2018, both from Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza. He developed his master thesis at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. In July 2022 he defended his PhD thesis proposing an integrated approach to energy poverty, developed at Comillas Pontifical University. During his PhD, he carried out an international exchange at the Center for Environmental and Sustainability Research (CENSE), Universidade NOVA de Lisboa (Portugal). He is currently working as Research Assistant Professor at the Institute for Research in Technology (IIT). His research is carried out in collaboration with the Chair of Energy and Poverty. His teaching activities are mainly developed in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Areas of interest:

Energy poverty, Residential Energy Demand, Energy Efficiency, HVAC systems, Energy Policy, Climate change.

Experience:

09/2017 - 03/2018. Erasmus program, Madrid, Spain. He attended three courses and worked on his Master Thesis at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.

04/2008 – present. Volunteer, Community of Sant'Egidio. For more than a decade, he has been a volunteer of the Community of Sant'Egidio, which provides services for children, elderly and homeless people. He participated in projects with this association in four different places: at an elderly home, at a children’s home, at Largo Passamonti in Rome and in Blantyre, Malawi.

09/2000 - 09/2012. Boy’s Scout, Rome, Italy. In 12 years of Scouting, he has developed skills of adaptation and resolution of concrete problems. Outstanding experiences: hiking in Italy, volunteering in Lourdes, participating in the World Youth Day (WYD) in Madrid, and kayaking from Treviso to Venice.

Skills:

Proficiency in Microsoft Office tools (Word, Excel, Powerpoint), advanced in EES and R, basic knowledge of Matlab, Mathcad, AutoCAD, Ecotect, Radiance, Climate Consultant.

Italian (Native), Spanish (Proficiency), English (Advanced).

Energy demand modeling.

Energy poverty indicators’ analysis.

HVAC systems’ feasibility analysis.

Thermodynamics and Fluid dynamics lab research and knowledge.

Basic electrical lab knowledge.

Designing, construction and testing of energy conversion systems.

Designing of sustainable buildings.

Current research interests:

Bottom-up models of HVAC demand in the residential sector.

Bottom-up models for domestic electricity consumption.

Study of future scenarios of household energy demand and expenditure.

Analysis of the techno-economic feasibility of heat pumps in the residential sector.

Critical review of energy poverty indicators.

Analysis and proposal of measures to combat energy poverty in Europe.