Dr. Omprakash Ramalingam Rethnam
Postdoctoral Fellow
Email: omprakash.rethnam@tudublin.ie
Dr. Omprakash Ramalingam Rethnam is a post-doctoral researcher at the School of Surveying and Construction Innovation, TU Dublin, working on the SEAI-funded CC-DORM project, which investigates overheating risks in dwellings under large-scale retrofit and climate change. His work focuses on energy optimization, thermal comfort, and building resilience.
Omprakash completed his Ph.D. in 2024 at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay as a recipient of the prestigious Prime Minister’s Research Fellowship, awarded by the Government of India to exceptional researchers demonstrating high academic merit and research potential. His doctoral research led to a customizable decision-support system for community-wide net zero planning, enabling policymakers to identify the most efficient building retrofits for achieving net-zero energy targets.
Omprakash has developed expertise in several building energy simulation tools (EnergyPlus, DesignBuilder, EUReCA, City Energy Analyst) and geospatial analysis (QGIS, WebODM). He is proficient in machine learning, object detection (YOLO), renewable energy optimization (HOMER), and Python programming. He is also a licensed UAV pilot (2-25 kg) certified by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, India.
Omprakash has contributed to several research proposals throughout his PhD tenure. He was one of the recipients of the R Subramanian Fellowship (2023), awarded for the research proposal on enhancing glazing energy performance through building energy simulation and optimization, with student funding of $2,403. Additionally, he played a key role in securing $144,187 in funding for a collaborative India-Canada research project on machine learning optimization for net-zero energy retrofits.
Omprakash’s research focuses on energy performance, thermal comfort, and climate resilience, providing data-driven solutions to address the challenges of a changing climate.