Contribute to Comfort at the Extremes!

The established, trusted venue on comfort in extreme environments.

We know your time is valuable. That’s why the CATE 2026 proposal format is short and simple—just enough space, with descriptions up to two pages, to convey your contribution clearly.

Read more about the five types of contributions and access abstract templates.

The call for CATE contributions closes October 31, 2025.

Comfort at the Extremes: Safe + Secure

Join us May 26-29 in Tucson, Arizona, USA

CATE 2026 is an international conference for scientific and professional discussion and exploration. Thermal comfort—or, too often, the lack of it—is a universal human experience. How we respond to heat, cold, and the regular extremes of weather is a key matter of concern around the world for built environment researchers and professionals, citizens, and policymakers.

Safe + Secure Built Environments: 3 Themes

Policy + Governance

Built environments don’t just reflect policy and governance—they are shaped by them. Through adaptive strategies, policy makers chart long-term paths toward sustainability and resilience in the face of extreme climates. Smart thermal comfort policies empower communities to meet the growing threats of heat, cold, and unpredictable weather head-on.

Value + Accounting

Built environments—and the people who call them home—can thrive when decisions are driven by data. By tracking climate risks and impacts, value-based strategies can help illuminate effective solutions in extreme conditions. Evidence-informed thermal comfort metrics unite diverse stakeholders, sharpen priorities, and ensure resources reach the places that need them most.

Health + Wellbeing

Responsible and responsive built environments must safeguard health and wellbeing as climate extremes intensify. Thoughtful design, resilient materials, and integrated heating and cooling strategies create safer, more comfortable spaces. Thermal comfort isn’t just about temperature—it’s about protecting lives, reducing long-term risks, and improving everyday life.

Meet our Invited Speakers

Victor Olgyay, FAIA

A bioclimatic architect and Principal at the Green Design Collaborative (GDC), Victor designed his first passive solar house in 1978. Since he has worked as an architect, writer, researcher, daylighting designer, and environmental consultant. As a Principal with RMI for 20 years, Victor encouraging widespread adoption of net zero district developments, low embodied carbon materials, and comprehensive building energy retrofits. He has consulted on hundreds of high performance building projects, lectured worldwide, published dozens of papers and testified to the US Congress in support of building efficiency.

From 1993 to 2000 Victor was an Associate Professor and Director of Research at the University of Hawaii School of Architecture and was Chairman of the AIA Honolulu Energy and Environment Committee. Victor served on the Board of Directors for the American Solar Energy Society, the University of Colorado Design Review Board, the Carbon Leadership Forum, ASHRAE’s Task Force for Building Decarbonization, the AIA National Committee on the Environment (COTE AG) and the United States GSA Green Building Advisory Committee, where he ran a task group to promote the procurement of low embodied carbon materials by the Federal government. His company Green Design Collaborative consults on high performance buildings internationally.

Robin Z. Puttock, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, WELL AP

An Assistant Professor at Kennesaw State University and a practicing architect with over twenty years of professional, national award-winning, sustainable design experience, Robin focuses on the pedagogy related to the built environment’s role in both carbon neutrality and human health and well-being, with an emphasis on the connection between academia and the allied professions. She is the editor and contributing author of Teaching Carbon Neutral Design in North America: Twenty Award-Winning Architectural Design Studio Methodologies (Routledge 2025) and a contributing author of Programming for Health and Wellbeing in Architecture (Routledge 2022).

Robin is the project architect of many LEED certified buildings as well as the first US Department of Education Green Ribbon School recognized by President Barack Obama. Robin won the 2025 AIA Georgia Educator of the Year Award and her students have won the AIA/ACSA COTE Top Ten for Students Award and the AIA Georgia Student Design Award. Robin serves as the 2025 Chair of the National AIA Committee on the Environment (COTE) Leadership Group and has earned two degrees from Virginia Tech: a Bachelor of Architecture and a post-professional Master of Architecture.

Vincent Martinez, Hon. AIA

Through his 19-year tenure at Architecture 2030, Vincent Martinez has been working to solve the climate crisis by catalyzing built environment decarbonization efforts through the development and activation of robust networks focused on private sector commitments, education, training, and public policies. Vincent has facilitated the collective impact of a large spectrum of industry partners and organizations to create local, regional, national and international initiatives and programs.

Vincent previous acted as the 2030 Districts Network Interim Director from 2013 to 2016, helping co-found the 2030 Districts model that has now been adopted by 22 North American cities and a founding member of the 2030 Districts Network Board of Governors. Vincent also formerly managed the development and dissemination of the AIA+2030 Professional Education Series, which provided design professionals in 27 markets across North America with strategies for reaching zero net carbon building operations and has since been developed into an AIA online education series. Through his work with the Zero Cities Project, a collaboration with national partners and 11 leading US cities, he led the development of Achieving Zero, a framework of incremental actions that cities and governments can put in place to ensure carbon neutral built environments by 2040. Vincent has most recently been leading Architecture 2030’s delegations at international climate convenings, including the UN Climate Conference COP28 in December 2023 and the Buildings and Climate Global Forum in 2024 hosted by the UN Environment Program and the Government of France.

Vincent is an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and was the 2018 chair of the AIA Energy Leadership Group, a former member of the AIA Sustainability Leadership Group, and was the 2022 chair of the AIA Committee on Climate Action and Design Excellence. He was named an Emerging Leader by the Design Futures Council in 2015 and one of Building Design+Construction’s 40 Under 40 class of 2022. Vincent is also a former member of the World Economic Forum’s G20 Global Smart Cities Alliance Sustainability Task Force and the Forum’s Urban Infrastructure Task Force.

Let us know you’ll be attending!

Organizers

The University of Arizona

Ball State University

Institutional Partners

Sponsors