Seema Bhangar on human health, data, and buildings

Design the Future

Seema Bhangar is a Healthy Buildings & Communities Principal at the US Green Building Council; she focuses on research and innovation. She is also a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley’s Center for the Built Environment. If you are interested in the field of human health and buildings, Seema advises you to “collect data and be curious and discerning and honest. We have evaluate impact and ask what we do not know.” Seema is working with a new team to rebuild a dedicated research function at USGBC. She is fueled, she says, by the magic that happens “when we bring researchers to our communities of practice.”

Seema is deeply proud of the network of people she has cultivated during her career so far, "people who value having a vision, who ask questions at the right scales, and who voice their opinions," she says. "In buildings and health, it’s not about the individual superstar. The nodes are people. Each one has a set of expertise and knowledge, and we really advance when we connect and share.”

She is excited for the frontiers that are now being explored in the movement. “Health is different than energy, so we’re using different methods than we did for the other pillars,” she says. “The community today has many tools and appreciates the need for urgency and scale.”