Donald Aitken Associates

We, at Donald Aitken Associates, have dedicated our lives to helping individuals and companies, communities and cities, states and nations, fulfill their missions and goals through policies and buildings that are in harmony and balance with the Earth's natural systems. We believe that we are, thus, contributing to sustainability in the truest sense, while enhancing the quality of life of our clients and the strength and stability of their cultural and economic support systems.

Donald W. Aitken, Ph.D.
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Dr. Aitken as the U.S. State Department's 2002 Earth Day speaker in Germany

Dr. Donald Aitken, a LEED™ Accredited Professional, is currently Principal of his own consulting company, Donald Aitken Associates, Affiliate Faculty Member at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, and Senior Consulting Scientist for the Energy Department of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Previously he has been a staff research physicist and astrophysicist at Stanford University, where he founded and directed three laboratory research programs, and founder and Chairman of the Department of Environmental Studies at San Jose State University, where he was named "Professor of the Year". Dr. Aitken has also served as the Executive Director of the Western Regional Solar Energy Center for the U.S. Department of Energy, and Senior Staff Scientist for Renewable Energy Policy and Economics with the Union of Concerned Scientists. He has over 100 publications in these various fields.

Dr. Aitken has twice served as national Chairman of the American Solar Energy Society, has twice directed the national solar energy conferences, and was the Technical Chair of the National Passive Solar Conference in June, 2002. He is the former Vice President, and Secretary, of the International Solar Energy Society, and was on the International Organizing Committee for the Solar World Congress in Adelaide, Australia, in November of 2001.

Dr. Aitken's work has a multiple emphasis on the use of renewable energy in the electric utility sector, on renewable energy marketing frameworks, and in architecture. Dr. Aitken has used his architectural background over the last 27 years in his pioneering building designs, including DOE's first solar-heated and daylit office in 1980, and, more recently, the national headquarters building for the Union of Concerned Scientists, located on Harvard Square; Nevada's first grid-connected solar-electric tract home; and a pioneering community college building design in Cupertino, California.

Dr. Aitken is a sought-after architectural and sustainable energy policy consultant, renewable energy policy and architectural daylighting lecturer, and professional architectural and engineering workshop leader, and has carried these activities throughout the United States, as well as in Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Cyprus, Israel, India, Africa, Mexico, and three of the Republics of the former Soviet Union. In April of 2002 Dr. Aitken was sent by the U.S. State Department to be the U.S.'s Earth Day speaker in six German cities.

In 1997 Dr. Aitken was awarded the American Solar Energy Society's highest honor for lifetime service to solar energy, the Abbot Award. In 2000 he was one of the "World Solar Award" recipients at the World Renewable Energy Congress in England.

Selected Publications by Dr. Donald Aitken

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