Daylight and window views positively affect health and well-being in many ways. However, children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are hypersensitive to environmental stimulation, which leads many educational facilities to use windowless spaces or fully block natural light to avoid potential distractions.

Thanos Tzempelikos, Professor of Civil and Construction Engineering and Ray W. Herrick Labs faculty, leads a $600K collaborative research project with Ball State University, sponsored by NSF, to solve this problem.

“To realize our vision, we formed a multidisciplinary team with expertise on daylight assessment, and control, engineering of indoor environments, autism behavior, and psychology of interior design” says Tzempelikos.

This project will first discover evidence linking daylight exposure (with different window shading options) and behavioral responses of ASD children, through extensive experiments. Using the collected datasets, statistical and machine-learning-based computational models will be developed to predict dynamic behavioral relationships to daylight-induced stimulation and provide insights on response classification. Finally, daylight and reverse engineering modeling will translate findings to new design and operational guidelines and best daylighting practices. These will be implemented and evaluated in real autism schools, in collaboration with teachers, parents and autism community stakeholders.

This interdisciplinary research is expected to establish a new paradigm and refine daylighting design and control in ASD facilities, to improve health and well-being of this sensitive population.