Biography: David Sailor is Director of the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning (SGSUP) at ASU. He also directs the Southwest Integrated Field Laboratory (SW-IFL), a US Department of Energy-funded center that integrates high-resolution observations, modeling, and civic engagement to provide new knowledge that addresses extreme heat and related urban environmental challenges, while delivering next-generation predictive tools that are regionally specific but also translatable to other regions.
Prior to joining ASU in 2017, Sailor was on the faculties of Tulane University (1993-2003) and Portland State University (2003-2016). He served as the Director of the South Central Regional Center of the National Institute for Global Environmental Change (NIGEC) at Tulane, was the founding Director of the Green Building Research Laboratory at Portland State, and founding Director of the Urban Climate Research Center at ASU. He received his doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley in 1993, where he conducted research in collaboration with the Energy and Environment Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Professor Sailor's scholarly agenda focuses on the intersection of climate with the built environment. This includes investigation of feedback mechanisms between the built environment and climate with a focus on building energy consumption and renewable energy resources as well as both indoor and outdoor thermal comfort and air quality. He has worked extensively on quantifying the causes and prospects for mitigating the urban heat island effect, including investigation of innovative materials and technologies integrated into building designs and urban infrastructure.
Sailor has also been quite active in several societies that focus on urban climate systems. This includes serving as chair of the American Meteorological Society's Board on the Urban Environment (2008-2011) and as secretary of the board of the International Association for Urban Climate (2014-2018). He received the 2024 Landsberg Award from the American Meteorological Society.