Lieko Earle joined NREL in 2009. She leads the field testing efforts for the Building America Program. Her research focuses on developing field testing and analysis methods to identify gaps and barriers for emerging and advanced retrofit systems to be implemented on a broad basis, as well as field evaluations of innovative building envelopes, water heating, and HVAC systems. She also conducts laboratory- and field-based investigations of automated home energy management devices, Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring techniques, and control strategies to develop cost-effective systems that integrate smoothly with home area networks and smart grids to maximize source energy savings.

Earle's background is in astrophysics instrumentation and extragalactic spectroscopy. Prior to graduate school she taught physics as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tanzania, where she spent many happy hours devising laboratory experiments for students using locally available materials.