Dr. Karin Schakib-Ekbatan has been working as a senior researcher in the Social Science Evaluation Division at IREES since September 2012. As a social scientist, she has many years of experience in the fields of environmental psychology and architectural psychology.  Her work is based on qualitative and quantitative methods of empirical social research.  She lectures nationally and internationally on project results and publishes in professional journals and books.

From 2017 to 2019 she was employed at the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and worked on experimental studies on thermal comfort in the Laboratory for Occupant’s Behaviour, Satisfaction, Thermal comfort and Environmental Research (LOBSTER) of the Building Science Group (fbta, KIT).

From 2007 to 2015 she worked at the Building Science Group (fbta, KIT) in national and international projects (e.g. EnOB-MONITOR, Annex 53, development of the survey instrument INKA for recording user satisfaction within the framework of the Assessment System for Sustainable Building (BNB)) as well as lecturer on architectural psychology.

From 2018 to 2021, she was a member of the expert panel of the Innovation program “Future Building” of the Federal Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Building (BMWSB).

From 2015 to 2023, she has been supervising the distance learning course Implementation of rational energy use – obstacles and strategies in the master’s course ‘Renewable Energies and Energy Economy’ at the Centre for Distance Studies and Continuing Education (ZFUW) at the University of Koblenz (formerly University Koblenz-Landau).