Maryam Khanbaghi is the director of Power Systems and Sustainable Energy Program and associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Before joining Santa Clara University, she was at Corning Inc. holding several positions in research, engineering and manufacturing. She created and led Corning’s first-ever advanced control group serving all Corning businesses with cutting-edge technology to improve quality while reducing costs. She also worked several years for Pulp and Paper Research Institute of Canada in Montreal and Vancouver as a research engineer where she worked on design and implementation of different estimation method and advanced control systems. She was the recipient of Technology All Star award in 2002. She was named among 88 of the U.S.’s “Brightest and Inventive Young Engineers” participating in the National Academy of Engineers, 2005 at the U.S. Frontiers of Engineering Symposium. She was awarded NSF CAREER award in 2023.
Education
- Ph.D. École Polytechnique, Montreal, Canada 1998
- M.Sc. École Polytechnique, Montreal, Canada 1993
- B.Sc. Universite de Nice-Sophia Antipolis, France 1990
Research
- Power systems stability
- Integration of renewable energy to the electric grid
- Stochastic control
- Process control
- Manufacturing optimization
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Santa Clara University (Silicon Valley, California) The Power and Control team is looking for a highly motivated individual who is excited about solving real-life power system issues around renewable integration and grid resiliency. As a Ph.D. student in this position, you will have an opportunity to build power systems models for microgrids that encompass Battery Energy Storage System (BESS), solar energy, wind energy and fuel cells. This is a 4 year fully funded Ph.D. program at SCU on "Hierarchical Robust Stochastic Control for a Flexible and Sustainable Power Supply".
Description of the work
The work will be developed in several steps. A large bibliography study will be done to summarize the various works which have already been developed on the question of networked microgrid control. In parallel, a dynamic model of interconnected microgrids will be developed and simulated in Matlab/Simulink. Then, some simple benchmarks will be used to test the proposed model. Moreover, several control theories will be analyzed. Various solutions will be achieved depending on the use of local or remote measurements.
Application
Interested candidates please contact: Dr. Maryam Khanbaghi: mkhanbaghi@scu.edu
- A copy of the candidate's CV
- A motivation letter highlighting the candidate's research interests
- The candidate's transcripts of grades (for all received degrees starting at bachelor's level
- The names and contact information of up to three references (preferably included in the CV)
Expected start date of the selected candidates: Winter quarter 2024 or Spring quarter 2024
Requirements
- MSc degree (or close to completion) in electrical engineering with emphasis in control theory
- Interest and drive to conduct scientific research in the energy field
- Interest in the following domains (previous experience is a plus):
- Optimization, game theory, and operations research
- Economics of electrical systems
- Demand response and demand-side management
- Power system operation
- Good mathematical and programming skills
- English language proficiency
Desirable
- Practical experience using Python
- Prior practical experience with Opal-RT is a plus
- Prior experience with PSSE User Written model is a plus
Courses Taught
Courses to be taught 2024-2025
- Introduction to Control Systems
- Introduction to Nonlinear Systems
- Model Predictive Control
- Linear Control Systems
- Power System Analysis
- Power System Stability and Control
- Linear Systems
- Circuit 1
For a list of Electrical Engineering course descriptions, visit the Undergraduate Course Descriptions page or the Graduate Course Descriptions page.
2023-2024
Introduction to Control System, Linear Control System, Digital Control System, Linear Systems
