05/11/2025
I want to congratulate my daughter, Mia Murphy, on accepting an undergraduate research position with the AMBER LAB at Colorado School of Mines. She'll be joining Dr. Paulo Tabares and his team to work on some of the most pressing issues of our time: saving energy and fighting climate change. Needless to say, I'm very proud of her.
From the lab's website: https://amber.mines.edu/
AMBER: Advanced Multiscale Building Energy Research Group
"We focus on applying interdisciplinary building science to address everyday challenges faced by local and global communities. Each of our projects is geared towards addressing a specific challenge in both residential and commercial buildings by leveraging the cross-section of mechanical, civil, electrical, and material engineering."
Research faculty said she won the position because they were impressed by her "drive, enthusiasm, coding, and math skills AND previous experiences in building science (all combined, very rare to see)."
Who knew taking my kids to work with me (back when our family contracting business was doing hundreds of energy audits/retrofits a year) would pay off someday (I used to pay them their age per hour)?
I still believe that there's no substitute for hands-on learning, so don't be afraid to get your hands dirty and work your way up from the ground floor. You just never know where it might take you.
Enjoy the jobsite photos from the good old days, and screenshots of the ongoing building science experiments, and research at the AMBER Lab: https://amber.mines.edu/
, , , , , , Colorado Energy Office, Energy Outreach Colorado, Apprenticeship Colorado, Denver Regional Council of Governments, Climate Action, Sustainability and Resiliency - City and County of Denver, RMI Buildings, Building Decarbonization Coalition, Front Range Community College Workforce Solutions, Northern Colorado Construction Sector Partnership
