Uniting to Tackle Climate Change Through Electrification

Climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing the world. Electrical engineers are working on innovative solutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the electrification of everything. In this webinar cohosted by MathWorks and IEEE, you will learn how engineers are working to generate electricity from low carbon sources, store it effectively, and use it in applications such as electric vehicles. The webinar begins with a short keynote talk by IEEE President-Elect Professor Saifur Rahman, who introduces the IEEE’s six-point plan for tackling climate change, followed by short talks from engineers working to tackle climate change.

About the Presenters

Prof. Saifur Rahman
2022 IEEE President-elect
Joseph R. Loring Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Tech

Professor Saifur Rahman is the founding director of the Advanced Research Institute at Virginia Tech, USA where he is the Joseph R. Loring Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He also directs the Center for Energy and the Global Environment at the university. He is a Life Fellow of the IEEE and an IEEE Millennium Medal winner. He was the president of the IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES) for 2018 and 2019. He is the founding editor-in-chief of the IEEE Electrification Magazine and the IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy. He has published more than 160 journal papers and has made more than 500 conference and invited presentations. His h-index is 56 with close to seventeen thousand citations. In 2006 he served on the IEEE Board of Directors as the vice president for publications. He is a distinguished lecturer for IEEE PES and has lectured on renewable energy, energy efficiency, smart grid, energy internet, blockchain, IoT sensor integration, etc. in over 30 countries. He is the founder of BEM Controls, LLC, a Virginia (USA)-based software company providing building energy management solutions. He served as the chair of the US National Science Foundation Advisory Committee for International Science and Engineering from 2010 to 2013. His research at Virginia Tech has been funded by Duke Energy, Tokyo Electric Power Company, the US National Science Foundation, the US Department of Defense, the US Department of Energy, and the State of Virginia. He has a PhD in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech.

Prof. Anne White
Head of Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology​

Anne E. White is the School of Engineering Distinguished Professor of Engineering at MIT. She received her PhD in Physics at UCLA and performed research at the Electric Tokamak (UCLA), NSTX (PPPL) and DIII-D (General Atomics) before joining MIT as a faculty member in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE). At MIT, Prof. White has served on a number of Institute-wide committees and currently co-chairs the MIT Climate Nucleus, charged with managing and implementing MIT’s new climate action plan. Prof. White's research focuses on magnetic fusion energy (MFE). Her work has included research in diagnostic development, turbulence and transport physics, and transport model validation on four tokamaks; Alcator C-Mod, ASDEX Upgrade, DIII-D, and NSTX-U. At MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center, Prof White had served as Assistant Division Head for MFE Collaborations and ran the Gyrokinetic Simulation Working Group, and the Alcator C-Mod Transport Group. She currently sits on the federal advisory board, Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (FESAC), and serves as Chair. She helped write the 2018 FESAC Report “Transformative Enabling Capabilities for Efficient Advance Toward Fusion Energy” and the recent 2021 FESAC Report “Powering the Future: Fusion and Plasmas. The reports define the role of fusion as a transformative technology and lay out strategic actions and recommendations for the future of the US fusion program. Anne was recently one of a select group of speakers to attend a White House Summit on a Bold Decadal Vision for Fusion Energy.

Adile Ajaja
Technical Lead Software Development, EVLO Energy​

Adile Ajaja is the technical lead for software development at Evlo. He joined Hydro-Québec to design and deploy a VVC system and later worked on grid dynamic reconfiguration. After joining joint venture Esstalion Energy Storage, he developed their original controller and put together the team that writes the software at Evlo. Adile holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering (power systems) from McGill University and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering (power systems) from Concordia University.

Dr. Gurunath Kedar
Senior Manager Vehicle Architecture, Dana Incorporated

Gurunath Kedar is an experienced automotive professional with around 15 years of experience in the automotive electrification industry. Gurunath has a Ph.D. in Systems Engineering with focus on electrified powertrain systems. As an experienced professional, he has led the development of several electrified programs at a major OEM and at a TIER-1 supplier and is well versed with the challenges of the industry and the future trends. He also has several technical publications in this field.

Dr. Nick Goberville
Connected and Automated Vehicle Research Engineer, Argonne National Laboratory

Nick Goberville is a Connected and Automated Vehicle (CAV) Research Engineer at Argonne National Laboratory. Nick has B.S. and Ph.D in Mechanical Engineering from Western Michigan University. His Ph.D. dissertation was focused on analysis of CAV sensing systems performance in snow-covered road conditions where he developed an algorithm for identifying tire tracks in snow using Machine Learning. During grad school, Nick also led various projects deployed in Michigan such as the 2019 and 2020 Michigan Mobility Challenges where he assisted in deployment of an L4 automated campus shuttle to close a mobility gap for students with disabilities and developed the sensor fusion and mapping software for a highway navigation system. In addition to these projects, Nick launched a startup company spun-out from WMU, Revision Autonomy, focused on commercializing tire track identification software. Now at Argonne, Nick’s organizes the CAV activities for students in the EcoCAR EV Challenge as well as conducts research focused on sensor characterization and CAV system energy analysis.

Dr. Tanya Morton
Worldwide Director Customer Success Engineering, MathWorks

Dr. Tanya Morton is the worldwide director of customer success engineering for MathWorks, the makers of MATLAB and Simulink. She has worked at the forefront of innovation, engineering, and science for 27 years, including 18 years in customer-facing roles at MathWorks and 4 years as a leader at a technology start-up. She is passionate about sustainability and leads an initiative to support engineers and scientists working on understanding and tackling climate change. She holds an M.A. in mathematics from the University of Oxford and a Ph.D. in mathematics and computer science from Vanderbilt University.