Five engineering professionals have been named to joint Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Washington State University appointments as part of the PNNL-WSU Advanced Grid Institute (AGI).
Henry Huang and Kevin Schneider with PNNL have received WSU appointments and Noel Schulz, Anurag Srivastava, and Mani Venkatasubramanian with WSU have received PNNL appointments.
Huang is a laboratory fellow at PNNL and the technical advisor for the Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technologies Office. His research interest includes high performance computing, data analytics, and optimization and control for power and energy systems. He has led research and development efforts of important software packages for power grid modeling and simulation. Huang has published more than 180 peer-reviewed publications, is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and is active in several IEEE Power and Energy Society technical committees. He is the recipient of the 2008 PNNL Ronald L. Brodzinski’s Award for Early Career Exceptional Achievement and the 2009 IEEE Power and Energy Society Outstanding Young Engineer Award. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China, and a doctoral degree in electrical engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
Schneider is the chief engineer and manager of Distributed Energy Systems at PNNL. His research focuses on distribution system analysis and power system operations. He was recently named an IEEE fellow for his contributions to the development of open-access tools for distribution system analysis. He is past chair of the Power & Energy Society Distribution System Analysis subcommittee and is chair of the Analytic Methods for Power Systems committee. Schneider is the recipient of a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, which is the highest award for young faculty beginning their careers. He is an affiliate associate professor at the University of Washington. He holds a bachelor’s degree in physics and a master’s and doctoral degree in electrical engineering from the University of Washington.
Schulz is the Edmund O. Schweitzer III Chair in Power Apparatus and Systems in the WSU School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) and currently serving as the PNNL-WSU AGI interim co-director. Her research has focused on power system modeling and analysis, smart grid applications, microgrids, renewable energy, and shipboard power systems. Schulz’s research has been funded by multiple national agencies – including the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Departments of Defense, Energy, and Homeland Security – and private power equipment companies. She is an IEEE fellow and has served as associate dean for research and graduate programs in the College of Engineering at Kansas State University (KSU). She also directed the KSU Engineering Experiment Station and the Electrical Power Affiliates Program and was the Paslay Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. She received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech, and earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities.
Srivastava is an associate professor of electric power engineering at WSU. He is director of the Smart Grid Demonstration and Research Investigation Lab (SGDRIL), steering committee member of the Energy Systems Innovation Center (ESIC) and technical lead of the U.S.-India Collaborative for Smart Distribution System with Storage (UI-ASSIST) center at WSU. His research interests include data-driven algorithms for power system operation and control, including resiliency analysis. He has received research funding in excess of $50 million from the U.S. Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, Siemens Corporate Research, Electric Power Research Institute, Schweitzer Engineering Lab, Power System Engineering Research Center, Office of Naval Research and several National Labs, with resulting software tools installed at a utility control center. He received his bachelor’s degree from Harcourt Butler Technological Institute, India, his master’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, India, and his doctoral degree in electrical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology.
Venkatasubramanian is the Boeing Distinguished Professor in Electrical Engineering and serves as the Director of the Energy Systems Innovation Center at WSU. His research areas of emphasis include power system stability and control. Based on his expertise, he served as part of the invited panels that investigated the 1996 western American blackouts and the 2003 northeastern American blackout that affected millions of residents. In addition, given his knowledge of oscillations in the North American Interconnections, he recently served as an oscillations expert for the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. He is an IEEE fellow and received his bachelor’s degree with honours in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India, and his master’s and doctoral degrees in System Science and Mathematics from Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri.
The PNNL-WSU Advanced Grid Institute was formed in 2018 as one of three PNNL and WSU partnerships that aim to accelerate scientific and technological progress. The AGI is working to create and implement a national-scale simulation platform and data framework to enable advanced grid controls and operations for complex power systems of the future.
