Esteemed colleagues,

I'm throwing my hat in the ring for a NSF GRFP fellowship (as well as
others fellowships). I have a few ideas for what I would like to research,
but I wanted to vet them with the building simulation community. Any
comments are appreciated. Epically comments regarding if you think
research on the subject is needed or has broader application(s).

Some of my interests:
Applying solar thermal to northern climates (ie: my home town - Detroit)
Natural ventilation and optimizing building designs for airflow inside and
through buildings.
Another key interest of mine is educating engineers and giving them easy
to use tools for analyzing sustainable strategies.

An aside - I wonder if I can apply for a fellowship to establish a
workflow and document it in a users manual for engineers? I am a proponent
of open-source software.. its free. Maybe document a workflow for CFD
analysis using open-source or free CFD packages (NIST FDS, OpenFOAM etc)
combined with open-source or free CAD packages (Blender)?

Typically I'm full of ideas, but right now while filling out this
application I cant decide on one...

Regards,

Shariq Ali EIT, LEED AP BD+C