Sam Wolk

I am passionate about using my software development and machine learning & high-performance computing expertise to decarbonize the global building stock through research at the MIT Sustainable Design Lab.  

My research is focused on developing accelerated methods for building energy modeling (BEM), particularly at urban scales and beyond.  This includes the design of deep learning and surrogate modeling techniques, Bayesian methods, large geospatial datasets, distributed/cloud computing pipelines, organizational frameworks, and fullstack web applications for BEM.  I also work on applying machine learning to inverse design problems in the BEM-space, particularly focused on autocalibration of energy model parameters and discovery of ensemble representations.  Peripheral interests include numerical methods for energy modeling and computational fluid dynamics, parallel computing algorithms, acoustics, design optimization, and, well, the list goes on...

Before coming to MIT, I worked in the contemporary art world as a software and embedded electronics engineer designing technical solutions for complex new media art installations.  I also worked as a prototyping and repair engineer at a boutique analog modular synthesizer company in conjunction with teaching experimental music & sound art in New York City. From my experience working in the art world, I became passionate about increasing the accessibility of media art at museums, and so I founded AccessKit with a collaborator in 2021.  AccessKit is proud to now be delivering synchronized captions, audio description, multi-lingual content and more direct to visitors' mobile phones for some of the nation's premiere art institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney, the Smithsonian, the Hammer @ UCLA and more.