Institute for Smart & Healthy Cities
Transforming Urban Environments
Jefferson’s Institute for Smart & Healthy Cities was created to support the research, innovation, and education that is happening across the university, focusing on transforming urban environments into smart and healthy cities. The institute is conceived as an aggregator and facilitator of transdisciplinary research and education across multiple disciplines, driving the future of our cities and communities. Supported by data and smart technologies, Smart Cities is an emerging paradigm in the development of urban environments in an attempt to build more efficient, healthier, and livable cities.
The Institute for Smart & Healthy Cities is a collaborative effort between the College of Architecture and the Built Environment, College of Population Health, and the Kanbar College of Design, Engineering and Commerce.
NEW EVENT UNESCO Symposium 2026
People-Centered Innovations for Responsive Cities
Monday, April 20, from 5:00 – 7:00 PM
Location: Lawrence Field DEC Center Auditorium - Thomas Jefferson University - East Falls Campus in Philadelphia.
This symposium reflects UNESCO’s core commitment to fostering international cooperation, interdisciplinary exchange, and knowledge sharing. It also marks an important milestone in establishing Thomas Jefferson University as an international hub for research, innovation, and policy leadership in smart, healthy, and learning cities.
Event Highlights Venice Biennale Exhibit 2025
Join us for a special preview of the exhibition INTERSECTIONS: Health, Environment, and Design at the Gutman Library, East Falls Campus – Lower Floor. Be among the first to experience the exhibit inside the Jefferson CAVE, a multi-sided immersive environment that brings the themes of health, sustainability, and human-centered design to life.
Location: Gutman Library, East Falls Campus – Lower Floor
On June 24th, Jefferson hosted an “Intersections: Health, Environment and Design” Symposium in Venice, Italy, as part of the event. Read more about it in the link below.
Grants & Proposals
The Institute supports Jefferson students in advancing innovative research, global collaboration, and community impact. Through a variety of grant opportunities, our community can access resources to bring ideas to life, expand scholarly work, and share knowledge on national and international platforms.
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SEED Grant Projects
SEED Grant Project & Descriptions
The Institute for Smart & Healthy Cities is pleased to announce the Smart & Healthy Cities Student Research and Travel Award. These grants provide funding to support graduate student research with a focus on the quality of life in urban settings.
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IUAV & Jefferson Collaboration
Network of Knowledge - University Collaboration
The collaboration between Università Iuav di Venezia and Thomas Jefferson University is developing a Centre of Excellence on Resilient Cities and Climate-proof Design and Planning. The expertise and knowledge combination provides a cutting-edge approach to rethinking the resilient city concept.
Research Focus
Urban Scale
- Characterize the interrelationship of urbanization, transportation and energy on population health.
- Analyze human behavior changes and the drivers for change though data-driven analysis, modeling, and simulation and visualization.
- Evaluate the research outcomes in statistical models to plan and predict future changes in the domains health, energy and transportation.
Building Scale
- Predict the effects of daylighting and natural ventilation on health outcomes in work, life and healing spaces.
- Develop new concepts for sustainability and net zero energy buildings and predict health benefits.
- Understand human behavior in relationship to building systems, space and environment.
Device Scale
- Characterize the connectivities and interfaces between the built environment and humans.
- Develop human centric building controls and management technology.
- Understand the interconnectivity between health data and environmental data, micro climate and air pollution.
