Faculty members pursuing energy-related research, who are affiliated with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (http://www.ece.mst.edu/) follow.  Click on the person's name to view a brief description of their research interests or click on the web site for more information. Click on an e-mail address to correspond. You may also find additional information by clicking at the left on the 'Research/Publications' category.

Badrul Chowdhury,   http://ece.mst.edu/facultystaffandfacilities/bchowdhury.html,                                  bchow@mst.edu

Keith Corzine,    http://ece.mst.edu/facultystaffandfacilities/kcorzine.html,                              corzinek@mst.edu     

Mariesa L. Crow,   http://ece.mst.edu/facultystaffandfacilities/mcrow.html,                                crow@mst.edu

Mehdi Ferdowsi,   http://ece.mst.edu/facultystaffandfacilities/mferdowsi.html,                              ferdowsi@mst.edu

Jonathan W. Kimball,   http://ece.mst.edu/facultystaffandfacilities/jkimball.html,                                        kimballjw@mst.edu

G. Kumar Venayagamoorthy,   http://web.mst.edu/~ganeshv/,                                                                                ganeshv@mst.edu                                     

 

Dr. Badrul Chowdhury's  research interests are in power system modeling, analysis and control; power quality; and utility-integration of distributed energy resources (DER) including wind electric conversion systems, microturbines, solar photovoltaics, fuel cells and energy storage.  He has recently started work on space-based modular power systems that will be appealing for the new NASA initiatives for exploration of the moon and Mars.

He has conducted research on fining sustainable renewable energy solutions and has managed about $2M of research funds for studies on renewable energy, particularly solar photovoltaics and wind power.  His efforts had led to the installation of a 50-kilowatt solar photovoltaic system on the campus of the University of Wyoming - the first of its kind in the state of Wyoming.

Dr. Chowdhury's research projects have been supported by the US National Science Foundation, Electric Power Research Institute, Sandia National Labs, Bonneville Power Administration, PacifiCorp, Ameren Services, NASA, and the US Department of Energy.  He has collaborated in the areas of applied power electronics and drives and energy storage applications with the technical staff of the the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL), Sandia NAtion Labs, and the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division in studying innovative designs of alternative energy systems for distributed power.  He spent the summer of 2004 as an ASEE faculty fellow at NASA's Johnson Space Center helping the Electric Power Systems Branch define its long-term goals with power requrements in future space explorations. 

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Dr. Keith Corzine's  research interests in energy include:

• Direct integration of advanced energy sources in drives for hybrid vehicles and other applications.  Recently, there has been an advancement in certain types of energy sources.  Ultracapacitors (UCs) are a good example; having very high power densities.  Some research has focused on incorporating ultracapacitors into hybrid electric vehicles and small vehicles exist that run entirely on UCs.  However, advanced batteries are achieving energy densities near that of ultracapacitors.  An interesting topic arises in incorporation of these new energy sources into a drive system.  Usually, this is accomplished through a dc/dc converter.  However, with modifications to the drive control, direct connection to the drive is possible.  This is especially interesting for advanced motor drive topologies where a larger number of energy sources is required.  For instance, multilevel power converters typically require a number of isolated voltage sources.  Some of these can be UCs or advanced batteries.  This opens up a new area of research in modulation methods and control to best exploit the energy sources in these applications.

• Renewable energy sources.  In particular, the connection of these sources to the electric utility grid.  At a higher level in the control of energy, the algorithms have been well established.  The detailed connection requires more attention considering energy sources that are now becoming popular.  One example is the connection of a number of solar cells to the grid.  Series connection can be problematic since one underexposed cell affects the output voltage.  Series or parallel connection through a multilevel (in this case multi-cell) converter can address this problem.  In this case, the power converter control is more complicated.  However, using techniques that are typically meant to balance capacitor voltages in multilevel converters, solar cell utilization can be controlled while maintaining the commanded output voltage from the higher level control.

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Dr. Mariesa Crow's  research interest are: Power-electronic applications in bulk power systems (FACTS), including energy storage and renewable energy.  Computer-aided analysis of power systems dynamics and security analysis.    

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Dr. Mehdi Ferdowsi's   research interests are:

• Power and energy conversion
• Power electronics
• Hybrid and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles
• Power and energy management
• Renewable energy sources
• Ultracapacitor-enhanced energy storage systems and motor drives
• Applications of digital control techniques in power electronics
• Multilevel converters
• Fuel cells
• Flywheels

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Dr. Jonathan Kimball' s  research interests include a broad range of power electronics applications to advanced energy sources, storage devices, and loads. Specific areas of interest include energy harvesting from solar, wind, and other energy sources; multi-phase dc-dc converters for high efficiency and fault-tolerance; and power converter technologies for integration of solar power in both on-grid and off-grid applications.

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Dr. G. Kumar Venayagamoorthy is the Director of the Real-Time Power and Intelligent Systems Laboratory at Missouri S&T  (http://rtpis.mst.edu) and the Principal Investigator of the NSF EFRI Project “Neuroscience and Neural Networks for Engineering the Future Intelligent Electric Power Grid” (http://brain2grid.org).

Dr. Venayagamoorthy’s research interest in energy includes:

• Development and applications of computational intelligence methods for power electronics and power systems modeling, control and optimization.
• Wide Area Monitoring and Control
• Power and Energy Management Systems
• Plug-in Vehicles including Vehicle-to-Grid
• Renewable Energy and their integration to the Utility Grid
• Optimization of Power System Operation for Emission Reductions
• Smart Grid Technologies
• Real Time Power System Simulation

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