Zhe (Barry) Chen
Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Building Environment and Energy Engineering The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Research Interests
I am currently a Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), where I received my PhD in 2024 under the supervision of Prof. Fu Xiao. Previously, I received my MEng from Tongji University in 2020 under the supervision of Prof. Peng Xu and my BEng from Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 2017. My current research interests include trustworthy AI for intelligent building energy systems, physics-informed and probabilistic building energy analytics, AI-agent-driven autonomous building operation and management, and grid-interactive buildings and energy flexibility.
I have published 33 papers 
I am the recipient of the PolyU Presidential PhD Fellowship and the PolyU Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship, and received the PolyU FCE Awards for Outstanding PhD Theses (the only recipient from the department). I have won multiple championships in competitions on international building energy flexibility prediction, distributed photovoltaic forecasting, and building load prediction.
News
Talk:Delivered the invited talk "Fast flexibility quantification and resilience evaluation for building air-conditioning systems" at The Innovation Conference on Energy 2026 in Shenzhen, China
Service:Selected as a Youth Editor of Building SimulationAttachment
Award:Received a Best Oral Presentation Nomination at the International Conference of Building and Simulation (BAS 2026) for the oral presentation titled "Fast flexibility quantification and resilience evaluation for building air-conditioning systems"Attachment
Award:Received the Best Oral Presentation Award and a Best Paper Nomination at the International Conference of Building and Simulation (BAS 2026) for the oral presentation and paper titled "Development and validation of a data quality assessment framework for machine learning modelling in building energy systems"Attachment
Talk:Presented "Fast flexibility quantification and resilience evaluation for building air-conditioning systems" at the International Conference of Building and Simulation (BAS 2026) in Hong Kong, China
Service:Served as a session chair for Applied Energy Symposium (AI×Energy 2026) in Ningbo, ChinaAttachment
Talk:Presented "A novel demand response detection and capacity prediction framework" at the Applied Energy Symposium (AI×Energy 2026) in Ningbo, China
Career:Advised six undergraduate students in BSE3716/BSE4726 capstone research projects
Talk:Delivered the invited talk "Demand response detection and capacity prediction using ensemble learning" at the IEEE International Conference on Energy Technologies for Future Grids (IEEE ETFG 2025) in Wollongong, Australia
Award:Won the AIcrowd FlexTrack Challenge: Detecting Energy Flexibility in Buildings, organized by AIcrowd, New South Wales Government, and University of Wollongong, for energy flexibility prediction; ranked 1/610 and awarded AU$10,000AttachmentSource
Paper:First-author paper accepted in Energy: "Bridging the gap between data-driven baselines and energy saving uncertainty for building retrofit"DOI
Paper:First-author paper accepted in Automation in Construction: "Multi-objective online optimization of building energy systems for improved control smoothness and efficiency"DOI
Talk:Delivered the invited talk "Embarking on your research journey: My experience at PolyU BEEE" at PolyU BEEE Research Postgraduate Student Orientation in Hong Kong, China
Service:Appointed as a Youth Editor of Carbon NeutralityAttachment
Service:Served as a Guest Editor for Buildings (ISSN 2075-5309). Special Issue: "Smart and Sustainable Buildings: Advancing towards Net-Zero and Intelligent Control"AttachmentSource
Award:Received the PolyU FCE Awards for Outstanding PhD Theses, an honor awarded to only 3 of the Faculty's 117 PhD graduates in the 2024/2025 academic year (top 2.5%) and the only recipient from the departmentAttachmentSource
Talk:Presented "Reliably estimating energy savings using data-driven models as the baseline" at The International Conference on Building and Simulation (BAS 2025) in Borlänge, Sweden
Paper:First-author paper accepted in Building and Environment: "Physically consistent data-driven optimal sequencing strategy for variable speed pumps in large building chiller plants"DOI
Career:Started the PolyU Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship project (HK$841,040; P0053872) on smart and scalable data-driven management technologies for building HVAC systems
Career:Completed thesis defense, received a unanimous excellent evaluation from the examiners, and was awarded the PhD
Paper:First-author paper accepted in Applied Energy: "Development of a probabilistic cooling load prediction-based robust chiller sequencing strategy and its real-world implementation"DOI
Award:Recipient of the PolyU Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship (HK$841,040) and a finalist for the RGC Junior Research Fellow Scheme (the only nominee from the department)
Career:Advised two undergraduate students in BSE3713/BSE4725 capstone research projects
Paper:First-author paper accepted in Energy and Built Environment: "Probabilistic machine learning for enhanced chiller sequencing: A risk-based control strategy"DOI
Award:Received the Elsevier Highly Cited Paper Award for the most cited paper published in Advances in Applied Energy in 2023AttachmentSource
Award:Won the First Greater Bay Area Data Application Innovation Competition, organized by the Development and Reform Commission of Shenzhen Municipality, for distributed PV generation prediction; awarded CN¥100,000 and invited to present to leaders of the organizer, earning high praiseAttachmentSource 1Source 2
Award:Received the Excellent Control Award in the 21st MDV Central Air Conditioning Design and Application Competition, organized by Midea Building Technologies, for AI-enabled chiller plant control; the competition is regarded as the "Oscar" of the HVAC fieldAttachmentSource
Talk:Presented "Robust comparison of optimization algorithms for optimal chiller loading" at the International Conference on Sustainable Development in Building and Environment (SuDBE 2023) in Espoo, Finland
Paper:First-author paper accepted in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews: "Similarity learning-based fault detection and diagnosis in building HVAC systems with limited labeled data"DOI
Talk:Presented "Similarity learning-based FDD in building HVAC systems" at the 3rd International Conference for Global Chinese Academia on Energy and Built Environment (CEBE 2023) in Shanghai, China
Award:Won the AI Master Cup Algorithm Competition, organized by Schneider Electric and Baidu PaddlePaddle, for building electrical load prediction; ranked 1/331, awarded CN¥20,000, and invited to attend the award ceremony at Wuzhen International Internet Exhibition & Convention CenterAttachmentSource
Award:Corresponding-author paper titled "Physical energy and data-driven models in building energy prediction: A review" was recognized as an ESI Hot Paper and Highly Cited PaperDOI
Award:Won the Smart Energy System Algorithm Competition, organized by UNiLAB and Alibaba Tianchi, for distributed PV generation prediction; ranked 1/513 and awarded CN¥20,000AttachmentSource
Paper:First-author paper accepted in Advances in Applied Energy: "Interpretable machine learning for building energy management: A state-of-the-art review"DOI
Paper:Corresponding-author paper accepted in Energy Reports: "Short-term load forecasting for multiple buildings: A length sensitivity-based approach"DOI
Talk:Presented "Quantifying HVAC electrical flexibility from building thermal mass: A case study of the DOE reference building" at the 16th ROOMVENT Conference (ROOMVENT 2022) in Xi'an, China
Talk:Presented "Interpretable machine learning for AHU fault detection and diagnosis: Rule extraction from black-box models" at the 14th International Conference on Applied Energy (ICAE 2022) in Bochum, Germany
Award:Won the PolyU i-Space: VRAR Contest 2021/22 with the project titled "AR-enabled smart building energy management platform"AttachmentSource
Career:Served as the lead researcher for the Hong Kong ITF project ITP/002/22LP (HK$7,300,000)
Award:Won the Silver Award in the Global AI Challenge for Building E&M Facilities for building cooling load predictionAttachmentSource
Career:Served as the lead researcher for the National Key R&D Program of China project 2021YFE0107400 (CN¥4,120,000)
Paper:Corresponding-author paper accepted in Energy Reports: "Physical energy and data-driven models in building energy prediction: A review"DOI
Paper:First-author paper accepted in Sustainable Cities and Society: "Multi-objective residential load scheduling approach for demand response in smart grid"DOI
Career:Started PhD study at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Award:Recipient of the inaugural PolyU Presidential PhD Fellowship (HK$1,203,800)
Paper:First-author paper accepted in Energy and Buildings: "A novel short-term load forecasting framework based on time-series clustering and early classification algorithm"DOI
Paper:First-author paper accepted in Building Simulation: "Data mining algorithm and framework for identifying HVAC control strategies in large commercial buildings"DOI
Selected publications
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Interpretable machine learning for building energy management: A state-of-the-art review
Zhe Chen, Fu Xiao*, Fangzhou Guo, Jinyue Yan
Similarity learning-based fault detection and diagnosis in building HVAC systems with limited labeled data
Zhe Chen, Fu Xiao*, Fangzhou Guo
Multi-objective residential load scheduling approach for demand response in smart grid
Zhe Chen, Yongbao Chen*, Ruikai He, Jingnan Liu, Ming Gao, Lixin Zhang
Multi-objective online optimization of building energy systems for improved control smoothness and efficiency
Zhe Chen, Fu Xiao*, Yongbao Chen
Development of a probabilistic cooling load prediction-based robust chiller sequencing strategy and its real-world implementation
Zhe Chen, Jing Zhang, Fu Xiao*, Kan Xu, Yongbao Chen
Selected awards
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PolyU FCE Awards for Outstanding PhD Theses
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Awarded to only 3 of the Faculty's 117 PhD graduates in the 2024/2025 academic year (top 2.5%); the only recipient from the department
Elsevier Highly Cited Paper Award
Elsevier
The most cited paper published in Advances in Applied Energy (IF: 18.3) in 2023
Champion, FlexTrack Challenge: Detecting Energy Flexibility in Buildings
AIcrowd, New South Wales Government, and University of Wollongong
Building energy flexibility prediction, ranked 1/610, and awarded AU$10,000
Champion, First Greater Bay Area Data Application Innovation Competition
Development and Reform Commission of Shenzhen Municipality
Distributed PV generation prediction; awarded CN¥100,000, was invited to present to leaders of Development and Reform Commission of Shenzhen Municipality, and earned high praise
Champion, Smart Energy System Algorithm Competition
UNiLAB and Alibaba Tianchi
Distributed PV generation prediction, ranked 1/513, and awarded CN¥20,000