Professor Semiha Ergan Wins University Distinguished Teaching Award

Semiha Ergan, a professor in NYU Tandon’s Department of Civil, Urban, and Environmental Engineering, has been named a 2025-26 recipient of NYU's University Distinguished Teaching Award, one of six faculty members across the university to receive the honor this year.

The award, presented annually since 1987, recognizes professors who demonstrate the highest standards of teaching and student engagement. Recipients must have worked at NYU for at least 10 years and served as full-time faculty for a minimum of two academic years. They are evaluated on their alignment with university teaching values, their record of mentoring students, and their contributions to pedagogy in their field.

Ergan, who joined Tandon in 2015 after a research faculty position at Carnegie Mellon University, where she also earned her Ph.D., has spent 11 years developing a teaching philosophy centered on enabling active learning, positive student experience, and feedback loops for continuous improvement. She credits that philosophy with earning her the recognition.

The students are my greatest teachers, and they are really the ones who deserve this award. Every piece of feedback they've given me over the years has helped me to continuously improve my classes and made me a better teacher."
— Semiha Ergan

That approach has shaped her undergraduate and graduate courses, where she works to build what she calls "active learning environments." Rather than relying on traditional lecture formats, Ergan incorporates hands-on projects and technology to keep students challenged and engaged, a philosophy that mirrors her research across building informatics, digital twins, and artificial intelligence.

Beyond the classroom, Ergan serves as associate chair of the Department of Civil, Urban, and Environmental Engineering and holds a courtesy appointment in the Computer Science and Engineering Department. She leads the Building Informatics and Visualization Lab, and is an affiliated faculty member at NYU's Center for Urban Science + Progress (CUSP) and the C2SMART transportation research center.

Her current research ranges from AI models that forecast New York City building energy demand — with implications for grid management and greenhouse gas reduction — to National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded work on AI powered and robot assisted modular construction, to NSF-funded work developing bio-inspired robot swarms for disaster response and construction sites.

Ergan received the NYU Tandon Distinguished Teacher Award in 2024, the Inclusive Excellence Award in 2023, and several research-related awards, such as the DARPA Young Faculty Award in 2015. Her most recent teaching award was announced by Provost Georgina Dopico as part of a broader slate of honorees for this year.