Ariane Middel

Associate Professor, School of Arts Media and Engineering

Ariane Middel’s research interests lie in the interdisciplinary field of urban climate with focus on climate-sensitive urban form, design, landscapes, and infrastructure in the face of extreme heat and climatic uncertainty.

For the past decade, Middel has advanced the field of urban climate science through applied and solutions-oriented research employing quantitative and qualitative field observations, local and microscale climate modeling, and geovisualization to investigate sustainability challenges related to heat, thermal comfort, Urban Heat Islands, water use, energy use, and human-climate interactions in cities.

Her ongoing research is focused on developing better models and metrics to quantify urban heatscapes as they are experienced by pedestrians. Middel directs the SHaDE Lab at ASU and is an active member of the Urban Climate Research Center (UCRC) and the Central Arizona–Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research (CAP LTER) program. She is the President of the International Association of Urban Climate (IAUC), the premier international organization for researchers engaged in all aspects of urban climate scholarship. She is also a Board member of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Built Environment (BUE), a member of the International Society of Biometeorology (ISB), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

Middel joined the School of Arts, Media and Engineering (AME) in 2018 and has a joint appointment with the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence (SCAI). Previously, she was in the Department of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University and in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at ASU. She received her doctorate in computer science (visualization) from a German National Science Foundation-funded international graduate school at University of Kaiserslautern, Germany and holds bachelor's and master's degrees in engineering from University of Bonn, Germany.