Matthias Yvan Chris Van Hove obtained the academic degree "Master of Science in Engineering: Architecture" (with specialisation in "Architectural Design and Construction Techniques") in 2018 from Ghent University, with the highest distinction. The title of his thesis was "Design and operation of domestic hot water systems: optimisation using building energy simulation," supervised by Prof. Jelle Laverge and Prof. Arnold Janssens. This thesis earned him the Marcel Herman Prize 2018, awarded by Atic, and a ticket to the REHVA Student Competition 2019 in Bucharest. Successfully completing this thesis led him to start as a researcher in the Building Physics research group at Ghent University. In the summer of 2018, Matthias secured a BOF research grant for his doctoral project entitled "Increasing reliability of bottom-up Building-Stock Energy Models using available data-driven techniques," supervised by Prof. Jelle Laverge and Dr. Marc Delghust. This BOF mandate allowed him to conduct research uninterrupted for four years, resulting in three* A1 publications (two as first author) and 16* peer-reviewed conference contributions (13* as first author) (*04/04/2022). The results of this research were presented at eight international conferences. Matthias also contributed to a research project on actual energy use in residential single-family homes in Flanders, commissioned by the Flemish Energy and Climate Agency, and was involved in international research within IEA-EBC Annex 70, which focused on analysing actual energy use at the building stock level. In the final year of his doctoral research, Matthias received an FWO travel grant that allowed him to spend five months at DTU in Copenhagen with Prof. Peder Bacher. This was the second time he had stayed abroad for his studies, after his Erasmus in Munich.