Renee Thomas

About Renee Thomas

Renée Thomas brings ‘hands-on’ experience and focused competencies that cross multiple disciplines. She is a licensed registered architect with 25 years of multi-disciplinary AED design and project management experience. Thomas specializes in creative, constructible and environmentally sustainable design solutions at all levels and scales of the built environment. She will bring demonstrable expertise to your design team in the following areas: NCARB licensed registered architect with design and project management experience in Corporate Office, Mixed Use Retail, Neighborhood Retail, K-12 Education Facilities, Multi-family, Medicare Licensed Skilled Nursing Facilities and Theatrical and Major Sports Arena Facility Design Interior and Exterior Architectural Lighting/Daylighting Design Consultant through her established architectural lighting design practice – RTL Design, LLC National Council of Interior Design Qualification (NCIDQ) Nationally Certified Commercial Interior Designer. Experienced project designer with built projects spanning multiple building types certified at the Platinum and Gold levels of building certification as recognized by the US Green Building Council’s LEED Building Rating System Specialties: Multi-phase Architectural Project Management, Architecturally Sustainable Design, Architectural Lighting and Daylighting Design, Guest Lecturer in Architectural Lighting, Daylighting Design and Sustainable Design Solutions for the Southwest Chapter of the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA) and the Sonoran Sustainable Building Advisor Program (Sonoran SBAP).

Experience

1. Senior Lighting Designer

   Arup

   Jan 2020 — Present · San Francisco, CA, US

   Based on the U.S. West Coast, providing focused engineering and architectural lighting design expertise and practice management. Specializing in solid-state lighting engineering and sustainability at all scales of the built-environment. Current research focus is on the design prototyping of LED UVC Ultraviolet Lighting Systems -(UVGI) Ultraviolet Germicidal Irradiance and digital fluence (UV dosage modeling) for bio-infection mitigation and airborne infectious disease control. Current research: Simulation of COVID-19 Ultraviolet Disinfection Using Coupled Ray Tracing and CFD Authors: Nathaniel L Jones, Paul Lynch, Joseph Hewlings, Justin Boyd, Ryan Seffinger, Dan Lister, and Renee Thomas Abstract Ultraviolet Germicidal Irradiance (UVGI) is the effective technique of inactivating disease-causing bacteria, mold spores, fungi, and viruses using short-wave ultraviolet radiation. In this study, we seek to quantify the efficacy and COVID- 19 infection risk reduction achieved by UVGI in the upper unoccupied zone of a room so that we may specify the type and placement of UVGI emitters optimally. We present a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) based approach to model disinfection of aerosolized pathogens in a non-uniform ultraviolet field with mixing driven by air exchange and temperature gradients. We validate our CFD against simple calculation methods for UVGI effectiveness in well mixed spaces, and we integrate it with the Wells-Riley model of airborne infection risk to assess the relative benefit of UVGI with and against other measures. We demonstrate an order of magnitude reduction in infection risk as a result of applying UVGI, as well as the ability to quantify infection risk in non-well- mixed settings where simplified calculations methods do not apply. Key Innovations Simulation of 3D ultraviolet radiative field Pathogen concentration, inactivation, and infection risk modelling in CFD Application to complex room geometries

Education

• Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine

  Master's of Public Health (MPH), Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Emergency Management for Pandemic Response (in progress)

  2022 — 2024

• Arizona State University

  Bachelor of Science - Cum Laude, Architectural Design

  1990 — 1994