People
Since its founding in 2019, the RIA laboratory has hosted 28 researchers at all levels: Undergraduate (UG), Masters (MS), and Doctoral (PhD). We are grateful for the support of several external and internal undergraduate research programs, including the NSF REU Program, NJ EDA, ARESTY, LSAMP, SUPER Women in STEM, who supported UG researchers in our lab.
Principal Investigator and Lab Director: Dr. Ahmed Aziz Ezzat
Ph.D., Industrial and Systems Engineering, Texas A&M University, TX, USA, 2019.
B.Sc., Industrial Engineering, Arab Academy for Science & Technology, Alexandria, Egypt, 2013.
Assistant Professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering, Rutgers University, 2019 – Present.
President, IISE Energy Systems Division, 2023 – 2024.
Secretary, Forecasting for Social Good (F4SG), 2023 – present.
Office: CoRE Building, Room #228
Professional Affiliations: INFORMS, IISE, IEEE-PES
Google Scholar; Linkedin; Twitter.
Ph.D. Researchers (3 Ongoing):
Feng Ye (2020 – )
Ph.D. student in Industrial and Systems Engineering, Rutgers University, 2020-present
M.S., Statistics, Rutgers University, 2020 – present
M.S., Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Southeast University, 2017-2020
B.S., Energy and Power Engineering (Major: Fluid Mechanics and Automatic Control), Jiangsu University, 2013-2017
Research Interests: Spatio-Temporal Machine Learning for Renewable Energy Forecasting and Operation
Office: Richard Week’s Hall, Room 220 (Personal Website)
Notable Achievements: Winner of the Best Student Paper Competition of the Sustainability Cluster at the 2022 INFORMS Annual Meeting, and the Best Paper of the Energy Systems Track at the 2022 IISE Annual Meeting.
Yating Fang (2020 – )
Ph.D. student in Industrial and Systems Engineering, Rutgers University, 2020-present
M.S., Integrated Systems Engineering, The Ohio State University, 2018-2020
B.S., Industrial Engineering, Purdue University, 2014-2018
Research Interests: Materials Informatics, Functional Data Analytics for Materials Design & Engineering.
Office: Richard Week’s Hall, Room 220
Jiaxiang Ji (2023 – )
Ph.D. student in Industrial and Systems Engineering, Rutgers University, 2023-present
M.A., Mathematics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2020-2022
B.S., Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, Nankai University, 2017-2021
Research Interests: Discrete Optimization and Spatio-Temporal Machine Learning for Renewable Energy Analytics and Operation
Office: Richard Week’s Hall, Room 220
MS Researchers (2 Ongoing):
Xinxi “Chris” Zhang (2023 – )
M.S., Computer Science, Rutgers University, NJ, USA, 2022 – Present
B.S., Software Engineering, Northeastern University (China), 2022
Research Interests: Bayesian Deep Learning, Diffusion Models, Machine Learning, Computer Vision
Office: Richard Week’s Hall, Room 220
- Personal Website: https://xinxi-zhang.github.io/
Priyank Patel (2023 – )
MS, Industrial & Systems Engineering, Rutgers University, NJ, USA, 2023 – Present
Btech – Mechanical Engineering, Ahmedabad University, 2017-2021
Research Interests: Forecasting and Energy Analytics, Renewable Energy Operations & Maintenance
Office: Richard Week’s Hall, Room 220
Undergraduate Researchers (3 Ongoing):
Vishnu Iyengar (2023 – )
B.S., Industrial & Systems Engineering, Rutgers University, NJ, USA, 2020 – Present.
Research Interests: Renewable Energy Operation & Forecasting, Data Analytics, Machine Learning with Stable Diffusion techniques.
Notable Achievements: Dean’s List Fall 2020 – Spring 2023, Outstanding Leadership Award (Fall 2022) as Lead Extern at Colgate via Rutgers MBS Externship Program, 2022 IEEE Hackathon Winner.
Professional Affiliations: IISE
Jeeva Ramasamy (2023 – )
B.S., Computer Science, Rutgers University, NJ, USA, 2021 – Present
Research Interests: Renewable Energy, Machine Learning, Data Analytics
Notable Achievements: Rutgers 2021 Data League Winner, National Merit Commended Scholar
Nicholas Percarpio (2023 – )
B.S., Industrial & Systems Engineering, Rutgers University, NJ, USA, 2021– Present.
Research Interests: Renewable Energy Operation & Forecasting, Data Analytics.
Notable Achievements: Rutgers Honors College, REHC Industry Mentorship Program Chair, SOE Peer Mentor
Professional Affiliations: REHC, IISE
Former Lab Members:
PhDs:
- Petros Papadopoulos (2019 – 2022), “Data-driven optimization of operations and maintenance in offshore wind farms.” Now with Thermovault, Belgium (Petros’ research has been selected as a finalist at the 2020 MIP Workshop, and has been highlighted at the IISE Magazine).
MS Research Assistants:
- Bhavya Jain (2019-2021), MSc. Research Assistant, Thesis Title: “Accessibility forecasting for offshore wind farm maintenance operations” — First Job: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) as a Simulation and Operations Research Analysis.
- Praanjal Nasery (2019-2021), MSc. Research Assistant, Thesis Title: “Integrating yaw misalignment into wind power curves: A data science approach” — First Job: Wind Energy R&D Engineer/Scientist II at The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI).
- Vaibhav Panchal (2021-2022), MS Research Assistant, Project: “Advanced Data Analytics for On-Board Diagnostics and Prognostics” — First Job: Data Scientist at Rivian.
- Rushil Patel (2022), MS Research Assistant, Project: “Installation and Analysis of a Solar Photovoltaic System at Richard Weeks Hall of Engineering“
- Vinay Kolanuvada (Summer 2022), MS Research Assistant, Project: “Sky-imager based Solar Forecasting.“
- Dhiraj Bagul (Spring 2023), MS Research Assistant, Project: “Sky-imager based Solar Forecasting.”
- Yiming Deng (Fall 2022), MS Research Assistant, Project: “Digital Twins for Offshore Wind Farms.”
Undergraduate Research Assistants:
- Irfan Peer (Summer 2020), 2020 ARESTY Summer Science Undergraduate program. Research Topic: “Solar irradiance and power forecasting in Piscataway, NJ using data science.”
- Jeffery Delva (Summer 2020), 2020 NSF-funded LSAMP program. Research Topic: “Time series forecasting of turbine power output and failures.”
- Fabio Gunderson (Fall 2020), Independent Research Credits. Research Topic: “Time series analysis and forecasting of solar irradiance.
- Xiangyue (Max) Wang (2020-2021), Honors Thesis in Physics. Research Topic: “Power capture modeling and optimization in wind farms” — Now pursuing a Masters of Data Science at NYU.
- Dev Patel (2020-2021),JJ Slade Scholars Program. Research Topic: “Autonomous Inspection & Reliability of Renewable Energy Assets.” — First Job: Deloitte Consulting as an Application and Program analyst
- Soham Palande (2020-2021), ARESTY Research Assistant Program. Research Topic: “Solar Nowcasting by Integrating Sky Imager Data” — Now pursuing a research assistant position with Rutgers DIMACS.
- Shreya Jain (Spring 2021 – ), Project SUPER Women in STEM. Research Topic: “Environmental and Economic Sustainability in Wind Farm Waste Management and Decommissioning.”
- Hamidu Barrie (2022 – 2023), ARESTY Research Assistant Program. Research Topic: “Solar-Powered Additive Manufacturing.”
- Andrei Dimitriu (2022 – 2023), NJ-EDA OSW Fellowship Program. Research Topic: “A Wind Data Analysis & Processing Tool for the Offshore Wind Energy Areas in the Mid-Atlantic“
- Katherine Moreira (2022 – 2023), ARESTY Research Assistant Program. Research Topic: “Data Analysis of Endangered Marine Mammals in the Offshore Wind Energy Areas in the Mid-Atlantic.”
- Althea Miquela (2022 – 2023), NSF REU. Research Topic: “Defect Detection in Solar Photovoltaic Systems Using UAVs and Machine Learning.” — First Job: Systems Engineer at L3Harris (Althea won the 1st place at the student paper competition in the IEOM’s 8th North American Conference).
High School Interns:
- Dylan Liu-Walter, (2019-2020), Millburn High School, NJ. Research Topic: “Hydrogen Refueling Station Modelling using Mixed Integer Programming.”
- Winston Ni (Summer 2022), Princeton Day School, NJ. Research Topic: “Statistical Models for Forecasting of Global Solar Irradiance.”
- Andy Xu, (Summer 2022), “Energy Supply and Demand Forecasting in a Photovoltaic Microgrid,”, Millburn High School, NJ (Andy was selected as a top 300 scholar in the National Regeneron Science Talent Search, and has now joined UMich for a BS in CS).