HTA Design consultant Serra Ardor named CIBSE ASHRAE Graduate of the Year 2026

Serra Ardor, a building physics and sustainability consultant at HTA Design, has won the 2026 CIBSE ASHRAE Graduate of the Year award for a presentation arguing that human-centred design must stay central as artificial intelligence transforms the built environment.

The Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) announced the result at its Young Engineers Awards on 8 October at 30 Euston Square, London. The ceremony was sponsored by Daikin and the Graduate of the Year category by Swegon, CIBSE said.

Ardor was one of 10 finalists who presented on the question of how building services engineers should evolve to shape AI's impact on a sustainable future, according to CIBSE Journal. Her speech focused on building performance and on feeding occupant experience back into future design.

In a Q&A published by CIBSE Journal, Ardor said she saw AI as one more tool in the engineering toolkit rather than something that changed how she approached her work. "It's there to support our work, not replace the understanding and judgement behind it," she said.

The result

Sasha Green, of UCL and FairHeat, took second place in the Graduate of the Year category, and Sebastian Taylor-Aguilar, of LSBU and MCA Consulting Engineers Ltd, took third, according to CIBSE's winners page.

CIBSE said the winner receives a fully paid trip to the ASHRAE Conference 2027, with a £600 cash prize for second place and £300 for third. In the Q&A, Ardor said she was looking forward to the opportunities the award might bring, starting with the ASHRAE Winter Conference in Chicago.

Finalists in the category give a five-minute presentation to a live audience that includes the judging panel, CIBSE said. Entrants must have graduated within the past two years, on or after 31 July 2024. CIBSE's shortlist shows the 2026 finalists came from employers including Savills, WSP, MTVH, Parsons, FairHeat, MCA Consulting Engineers, HTA Design and Cundall.

From runner-up to winner

The win follows Ardor's placing as runner-up in the 2025 CIBSE Undergraduate of the Year category, when she represented University College London and was studying for a Master's in Environmental Design and Engineering, according to CIBSE. The 2025 Graduate of the Year was Hannah Gray of the University of Edinburgh and Foster + Partners.

HTA's own profile says Ardor joined its Sustainable Futures team in 2025 after completing the UCL MSc, having earlier worked as an architectural assistant and holding a BA(Hons) in Architecture. CIBSE's shortlist and winners pages describe her as a junior building physics and sustainability consultant at HTA Design; HTA's profile gives the title without "junior" and CIBSE Journal names her employer as architect HTA.

At HTA she works on projects across RIBA Stages 1 to 5, including energy, overheating, microclimate and daylight assessments, and supports BREEAM and HQM certification, the practice said. She also sits on the CIBSE Young Engineers Network London Committee and is involved with ENGRL: Girls in Engineering.

Care home cooling research

The human-centred message behind the winning presentation has a technical counterpart in Ardor's article "Cooling for the vulnerable", published in the July/August 2026 CIBSE Journal.

The study examined current and future overheating risks in a single-storey care home for eight adults with severe epilepsy and additional health conditions, and evaluated passive and hybrid cooling strategies. Under current conditions, the study found energy savings of up to 66% compared with the home's existing cooling approaches, the article said.

Portable air conditioning units, despite their widespread use in care settings, performed poorly overall, Ardor found, while passive design remained fundamental to overheating mitigation.

In the Q&A, Ardor said post-occupancy evaluation that combines measured performance data with direct feedback from occupants could help engineers understand where designs work and where they fall short. "Social equity shouldn't be treated as something separate from engineering. It should be part of how we define a successful design in the first place," she said.

She added that the engineers who thrive would be those who use AI thoughtfully and critically, rather than those who use it most.

Entries for the 2027 Young Engineers Awards open in spring 2027, CIBSE said.