May 2019 News Briefs
In New Tepper Energy Course, Students Solve Real-World Market Challenges
Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business offered a new course this semester that exposed graduate students to the challenges of the modern electricity market. The mini-course, ‘Management in Electric Power Systems & Electricity Markets’ was highly favored. Taught by Panayiotis Moutis, a systems scientist at the Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation, students learn about topics such as electricity market deregulation and the streams of profits and savings in electric power systems.
The class culminates in a final project that asks students to tackle one of six real-world problems posed by industry experts and academics in the field. Students have to imagine what duties they might be expected to perform as a project manager. EST&P student Poorna Mujumdar said, “I will be interning with ICF this summer in their Commercial Electricity Markets team. Panos' course played a direct role in helping me crack my interviews, given the similarity between my role in the internship and the syllabus of the course."
Read more about the 'Management in Electric Power Systems & Electricity Markets' mini-course.
Professor Shawn Litster Receives DOE Award for Fuel Cell R&D
On April 29, 2019, the U.S. Department of Energy Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Program presented EST&P Affiliated Faculty member and Department of Mechanical Engineering Professor Shawn Litster with the Fuel Cell R&D Award at the 2019 DOE Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Program Annual Merit Review and Peer Evaluation Meeting. Professor Litster has been leading scientists from Carnegie Mellon University, State University of New York Buffalo, Giner, and 3M on their fuel cell project “Advanced PGM-Free Cathode Engineering for High Power Density and Durability”. The DOE recognized Prof. Litster and his team stating that, “The success of the project is due to the team’s strength in catalyst development, membrane electrode assembly fabrication, and characterization, and to the well-organized collaboration of industry, academic, and national laboratory partners led by Shawn.” Congratulations to Professor Litster and his team on the recognition of their hard work.
EST&P Student, ECE Faculty and PhD Candidates Have Paper Accepted for IEEE Conference
Throughout the spring semester, EST&P student Athanasios Terzakis has been working with Tanoto Professor and Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Head Larry Pileggi on a project about how the circuit simulation algorithms, which allow for solving highly nonlinear circuits of over one billion variables, can be applicable to power system simulation and optimization problems, through the use of an equivalent circuit formulation. Through their work, preliminary results indicated that the proposed algorithm results in significantly better simulation runtime performance when compared to existing homotopy methods. Terzakis and Pileggi, along with ECE Adjunct Professor Amritanshu Pandey and ECE PhD candidates Marko Jereminov and Martin Wagner, had their work accepted for the IEEE Conference on Environment, Electrical Engineering and I&CPS Europe. The conference, which is an international forum for the exchange of ideas and information on energy systems both today and in the future, will take place in Genoa, Italy from June 11-14th, 2019.
Learn more about Professor Pileggi's research interests.
EST&P Student, Team Selected as Finalists for 8th Annual Yale Graduate Consulting Club Case Competition
Three Carnegie Mellon students, Justin Bobo (MechE), Reshmi Ghosh (CEE), and Shefali Rai (EST&P), competed as a team and were finalists in Yale University’s 8th Annual Graduate Consulting Club Case Competition in March. The students placed first in their group category over 18 other graduate-student teams and were named the most innovative team. According to Rai, the students’ solution “effectively overlapped engineering design with market segmentation and regulation,” combining their technical expertise with their professional work experience.
Learn more about the 8th Annual Yale Graduate Consulting Club Case Competition.