International Conference on Complex Systems Engineering (ICCSE 2015) Held in UConn

Posted on November 18, 2015 by Andrew

The University of Connecticut (UCONN) organized a two-day international conference on complex systems engineering (ICCSE 2015) on November 9-10, 2015 at the UConn’s main campus in Storrs, CT. The conference organization committee was led by Dr. Krishna Pattipati as the general chair and Dr. Shalabh Gupta as the program chair. The conference was focused on latest developments in analysis and modeling of complex systems that are built from, and depend upon, the synergy of computational and physical components, the so-called cyber physical systems. The conference featured talks by plenary speakers from industry and academia, panel discussions, technical paper sessions, student poster sessions and industry exhibits. The conference was a 2nd year initiative by the recently established UTC Institute for Advanced Systems Engineering (UTC-IASE). The conference was financially co-sponsored by UTC and Aptima and technically sponsored by IEEE-Systems Man and Cybernetics Society. The conference served one of the institute’s goals of making it a hub for world-class research, project-based learning by globally-distributed teams of researchers, and industrial outreach activities.

There were four plenary speakers, viz., Dr. Michael McQuade (Senior Vice President of Science and Technology at UTC), Dr. Edward Lee (Robert S. Pepper Distinguished Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) department at U.C. Berkeley), Dr. George Pappas (Joseph Moore Professor in the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania), and Dr. Chris Paredis (Program Director for the Engineering and Systems Design (ESD) and Systems Science (SYS) programs at the National Science Foundation). Dr. Michael McQuade outlined the mega-trends that are impacting systems engineering and highlighted technology and talent needs of the industry and more specifically of UTC. Dr. Edward Lee provided an overview of the need for models with time and concurrency requirements, model-based design and analysis, domain-specific languages, architectures for real-time computing, schedulability analysis, and modeling and programming of distributed real-time systems. Dr. George Pappas gave a talk on formal synthesis and analysis for supervisory control of hierarchical hybrid systems using linear temporal logic. Dr. Chris Paredis spoke about the theoretical foundations for Systems Engineering, the role of modeling in Systems Engineering and gave the audience a glimpse of opportunities for research in Systems Engineering and model based systems engineering (MBSE) being sponsored by NSF.

In addition to the plenary speakers, many representatives from industry and academia presented their latest research along three tracks of embedded systems, complex networked systems: control and inference, and model based systems engineering and applications. There was an education panel where educators from UConn, Stevens Institute of Technology, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute and UTC exchanged lessons learned and discussed the standardization of Systems Engineering education. The conference was truly international with representation from Asia, Europe and North America. More than 80 people participated in the conference which led to a healthy exchange of ideas. Planning for next year’s conference on the Avery Point campus of the University of Connecticut is already underway.

ECE Seminar Series: Enabling resilient control of power systems with distributed energy storage

Posted on November 16, 2015 by Andrew

ECE Seminar Series Fall 2015

Monday November 16^th 2-3 PM, ITEB 336

Enabling resilient control of power systems with distributed energy storage

Mads R. Almassalkhi

University of Vermont

Abstract: In 2003, the National Academy of Engineering named the electric grid the Greatest Engineering Achievement of the 20th century, however, just a few months later, US and Canada experienced their largest ever black-out. Year-to-year increases in the number of large blackouts suggest that power systems today are operated closer and closer to their limits. To aid human control-room operators overcome this challenge, increased sensing and actuation is becoming available in the control room, including PMUs, FACTS devices, and fast-acting demand and energy storage. However, this added system complexity makes it more difficult for human operators to determine an appropriate response to unanticipated events. At a minimum, decision-support tools are needed to guide human decision-making. In fact, closed-loop feedback processes will become indispensable. As such, we present resilient model predictive control (MPC) schemes that mitigate the effects of overloads in transmission and distribution systems. Resilient control is achieved through a receding-horizon model predictive control (MPC) strategy which alleviates temperature-based overloads on transmission lines and distribution-level transformers and, therefore, prevents large outages. Both centralized and distributed optimization-based schemes will be presented with numerical case studies.

Short Bio: Mads R. Almassalkhi is an Assistant Professor at School of Engineering at the University of Vermont. His research interests lie at the intersection of power systems, optimization, and controls and focus on developing novel feedback and optimization algorithms that improve responsiveness and resilience of power systems, which is increasingly more important as power systems are operating closer and closer to their limits. His past work includes model predictive control of bulk power systems, distributed control of multi-agent systems, applications of optimization and systems theory to electric and multi-energy power systems. Prior to joining the University of Vermont, he was lead systems engineer at Root3 Technologies. He received his MS and PhD from the University of Michigan in Electrical Engineering: Systems and a dual-degrees in Electrical Engineering and Applied Mathematics from the University of Cincinnati, Ohio.

ECE Seminar Series: The Emergence of Topological Insulators as Candidates for Optoelectronics and Spin-Based Applications

Posted on November 6, 2015 by Andrew

ECE Seminar Series Fall 2015

Thursday November 13^th 1-2 PM, ITEB 336

The Emergence of Topological Insulators as Candidates for Optoelectronics and Spin-Based Applications

Parijat Sengupta

Boston University

Abstract: The advent of topological ideas in condensed matter is a new paradigm where the traditional notions of Fermi-liquid theory and order parameter do not explain experimentally observed phenomena, for instance, the integer and fractional quantum Hall effect and the more recently discovered topological insulators (TI). In this presentation, I will focus on topological insulators and go over some of the key facts that typically characterize these materials. I will begin by presenting analytic results on band structure of topological insulators derived using a simple Dirac Hamiltonian and connect them to more elaborate semi-empirical tight binding and continuum k.p calculations. An important aspect of TI band structure is the helical dispersion where the spin is locked perpendicularly to momentum giving rise to 1) spin-polarized photocurrents when the surface is illuminated with circularly-polarized light and 2) spin-dependent optical transition from valence to conduction surface bands. Using the phenomenon of circular dichroism (preferential absorption of right- or left-circularly polarized light), I will emphasize on light absorption on the surface of 3D TIs such as Bi2Se3 with a single Dirac cone and contrast them with the C2v group symmetric (at X symmetry point) triple Dirac-coned topological Kondo insulator (TKI) samarium hexaboride (SmB6). I will explicitly show how the helical band structure of SmB6 at the X symmetry point of the surface Brillouin zone with Rashba- and Dresselhaus-like terms give rise to a dual-valued circular dichroism. Further, using the Berry curvature I will try to draw a parallel between the emerging field of valleytronics in transition metal dichalcogenides such as MoS2 and TIs that conform to the C2v symmetry. I will seek to emphasize that the strong polarization-dependent light absorbance on account of the Dirac fermions on surface of a TI and an easily tunable surface band gap can lead to design of optoelectronic devices with greater efficiency. Since spin and its myriad manifestations in solid state is crucial to topological insulators, I will present results on the frequency-dependent spin susceptibility in the TKI SmB6 which may prove useful to probe spin density currents that serve as the foundational block of spin-based applications. In the last part of the talk I will draw attention to the fact that while most topological insulators are strongly spin-orbit coupled driven, the multi-layered Dirac semi-metal black phosphorus which is a 2D material undergoes a giant Stark effect induced topological phase transition when doped with potassium. The topological features of BP with Dirac fermions and a linear band structure can lead to graphene-like transport properties for improved device performance. I will map the dynamic optical conductivity and spin current density changes to the transitions of BP from a trivial insulator with finite band gap to a zero gap material and then to a topological insulator with increasing dopant (K) density.

Short Bio: Parijat Sengupta received his PhD in electrical engineering from Purdue University, West Lafayette in December 2013 where he primarily worked on the electronic structure of materials and focused on topological insulators for his dissertation. Following his PhD, he joined the computational materials group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison in January 2014 as a postdoctoral research associate and was involved in modeling of defects in nuclear materials using ab-initio principles and molecular dynamics. He moved to the Photonics Center at Boston University in March of 2015 as a postdoctoral research associate and is currently working on light-matter interaction and spin transport in topological insulators and electron transport in colloidal quantum dots. Prior to joining Purdue university, he was employed with Nvidia Corp., Santa Clara as a product engineer.