Isabel Méndez is a Research Professor at Tecnológico de Monterrey with an interdisciplinary background in architecture, electronic engineering, and energy management. She holds a PhD in Engineering Sciences with highest honors and is a Certified Energy Manager. Her research integrates building energy performance, occupant behavior, human-centered artificial intelligence, and digital twins to enable evidence-based decision-making in buildings, manufacturing systems, and technology-enhanced learning.
She completed two postdoctoral research appointments focused on sustainable and intelligent systems. Her first postdoctoral appointment was at Tecnologico de Monterrey, hosted by the Institute of Advanced Materials for Sustainable Manufacturing, where her work advanced data-informed approaches for energy efficiency and sustainability in industrial contexts, connecting engineering design, system performance, and scalable decision frameworks.
Her second postdoctoral appointment was as a Fulbright García Robles Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, hosted by the California Institute for Energy and Environment. During this appointment, she led and proposed an international research call, coordinated interdisciplinary collaborations, and conducted research on occupant-centric modeling and AI-enabled decision support for building energy systems. This work emphasized turning large-scale, real-world data into actionable insights through intelligent interfaces and digital twin methods.
Dr. Méndez has published peer-reviewed scientific papers, conference papers, and book chapters on sustainability, smart cities, digital twins, artificial intelligence, and intelligent systems. She is also a co-author of books on smart cities and sustainable manufacturing, reflecting her commitment to translating research into practical frameworks for industry and society. In parallel, she has pursued intellectual property development, with two patent applications filed related to interactive systems that connect physical and virtual environments and support collaborative, human-centered decision-making, as well as digital twins for saving energy in the architectural field.
Her academic and research trajectory has been recognized with several distinctions, including the Best Thesis Award at the TecScience Summit and the Premio Mujer Tec in the Environmental category, acknowledging both the scientific quality and societal impact of her work
Throughout her career, she has collaborated with leading international institutions, including UC Berkeley, UC Davis, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Stanford University, and MIT, as well as national institutions such as UNAM and IPN. Her work is driven by a human-centered vision of sustainability, designing tools and methods that make complex energy and technology decisions more transparent, accessible, and impactful.
isabelmendez@tec.mx
