Maria Coral is a PhD candidate in the climate/comfort comparison for sustainable building design, at the Energy and Environment Group in the Department of Architecture and Technology. She is also an assistant teacher at the international MSc. in Sustainable Architecture at NTNU, with tight connections with the Research Centre on Zero Emission Neighbourhoods, fmezen.no (previously Zero Emission Buildings, www.zeb.no)

In her research, she is exploring the limits of Building Bioclimatic Design in cold climates with a special focus on non-residential buildings. Her main research question is whether it would be possible to design a fully passive office building in cold climates.

In connection with her research, she got involved in the R&D projects “Natural Climatization of Office Buildings” and "Simplification of Technical Systems" with Skanska, SINTEF Building and Infrastructure and several partners within the Norwegian building industry.

Her background is in architecture, with a MSc. in Sustainable Architecture from NTNU (Norway) and a M.Arch. from the Escuela Tecnica Superior de Arquitectura at the Universidad Politecnica de Valencia (Spain).

In the last years, she has acquired a special interest and understanding in Architectural Science, with a particular focus on Building Bioclimatic Design, thermal comfort, indoor air quality, energy efficiency and GHG emissions.