Blog and Updates

Stay tuned for an article catching up with former UI-ASSIST researchers!

Stay tuned for an article highlighting the women of UI-ASSIST!

Alasdair Crawford has served on the UI-ASSIST U.S. consortium team for 3 years as an energy storage scientist. Crawford is a computational scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), where he focuses his efforts on building physical and economic models of redox flow batteries which allow for economic optimization of their design.   “I’ve enjoyed taking […]

U.S.-India collAborative for smart diStribution System wIth Storage (UI-ASSIST) team members from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and Washington State University (WSU), have partnered with The Energy and Research Institute (TERI) to create load forecasting models of the electric grid in India.   UI-ASSIST is a Smart Grid and Energy consortium under the Joint Clean Energy […]

The sixth annual UI-ASSIST meeting kicked off on July 12th with introductory comments from Dr. Ankush Sharma and Dr. Noel Schulz, two of the project leads. Sharma gave a brief overview of the UI-ASSIST project, giving a rundown of the project’s themes and Schulz gave attendees the chance to introduce themselves and comments about the […]

Dr. Anuradha Annaswamy is part of the UI-ASSIST project and is the director of the active-adaptive control laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). According to the MIT Institute for Data Systems and Society website, “Dr. Annaswamy is the author of a hundred journal publications and numerous conference publications, co-author of a graduate textbook […]

Solving the world’s present problems requires innovators and creative thinkers. This is especially true in the area of energy and the power grid. As the power industry pivots to decentralized and green energy, thinkers like Francisco Neto at Burns & McDonell are needed to solve challenges by bringing their unique perspectives to global problems.   […]

Rabab Haider was a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, advised by UI-ASSIST team member Dr. Anuradha Annaswamy. Haider completed her master’s and Ph.D. degrees from MIT in 2020 and 2023 respectively. Haider’s next job will be as a Postdoctoral Fellow with the AI4Opt Institute and the Department of Industrial and […]

Dr. Mladen Kezunovic, along with Dr. Miroslav Begovic, Dr. Chanan Singh and several students, have contributed to the U.S.-India CollAborative For Smart DiStribution System WIth Storage (UI-ASSIST) consortium, which is a six-year, $30 million project to help advance the development of the power grid. As part of this project, Kezunovic, who serves as Regents Professor and the Eugene […]

Imagine that the process of distributing electricity to homes from the power grid is like travelers boarding a train. There are multiple steps to take before they can reach their final destination. First, they have to buy a ticket at the ticketing booth – this is where the power is generated. Second, they board a […]

Burns & McDonnell is an employee-owned engineering consulting company based in Kansas City, Missouri that focuses on designing and improving our nation’s critical infrastructure. Recently, UI-ASSIST team member Dr. Ahmed Saber visited the Burns & McDonnell headquarters to give a presentation on cybersecurity and joined fellow UI-ASSIST team member Francisco Neto for a tour of […]

Dr. Sanjeev Pannala is a technical lead of UI-ASSIST, which works on research and development of the technology in relation to distribution systems. Dr. Pannala got his Ph. D from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, and helped his professor at the time work with UI-ASSIST, which is how he got his start in the program.

One of the 11 themes of UI-ASSIST is energy storage: with modeling and optimal management being the focus. The United States Department of Energy (DOE) says that to be able to generate electricity and store it long enough so it can be available when needed would be a gamechanger.   There are many ways energy […]

The IEEE Power & Energy Society Scholarship Plus Initiative is a scholarship awarded to students who are interested in grid technology, have high GPAs and attend University in the United States, Puerto Rico or Canada.   Washington State University (WSU) student Ali Khan is pursuing a master’s degree in electrical engineering and won the award from […]