Dr. Helen Stopps

Helen Stopps chose her undergraduate degree in transportation engineering as a practical way to make a positive impact on environmental and social issues. "The focus of my undergraduate degree on cities, the people in cities and their movement, and how that impacts social equity, inclusion and equal distribution of resources," she said, "has really informed my research and direction."

Stopps' data-driven research measures the performance of buildings on a regional scale and, in combination with qualitative methods, illustrates how variables like policies and stakeholders influence building construction and operation. According to Stopps, the ideas that arise from this type of research could be applied to improve built environments and their systems much more equitably. 

"The indoor environments of the buildings in which we live impact our physical health and our quality of life," said Stopps. "We're doing too little to ensure that a building's quality is not influenced by its location or inhabitants' social status." Stopps hopes her research will inform policies and processes and make a higher-level impact than grassroots activism.