Opening

Six fully funded Ph.D. student positions are available for Spring/Fall 2025 intake. The students will support ongoing DOE and NSF projects. See project descriptions below:

1. (DOE) Model-free control and fault detection/diagnosis (FDD) for next-generation heat pumps — This is a collaborative project with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory where the OU team will be responsible for development and experimental validation of model-free algorithms for heat pump optimal control and FDD. The algorithms will be devised based on online convex optimization and learning-based control techniques, so strong numerical or math background is required.
2. (DOE) Aging-aware optimal control of motorized energy storage — This project aims to characterize aging behaviors of electric motors used in energy storage systems, such as heat pump-driven thermal storage and pumped-storage hydro, and develop aging-aware control strategies. Students with general mechanical/electrical engineering backgrounds are encouraged to apply.
3. (NSF) Altruistic game-theoretic control of sustainable communities — This project will study a new altruistic game-theoretic framework to characterize residential energy use behaviors in response to electricity carbon intensity signals. The problem will be addressed as non-convex cost-sharing games. Strong math background is required.
4. (Industry) Load-based testing of heat pump equipment — Load-based testing method is increasingly adopted by regulation agencies, e.g., CSA SPE-07-2023 and AHRI 210/240 CVP (to be rolled out soon), to better capture operational performance of heat pump equipment. We aim to develop a control simulation testbed to support control stability analysis in load-based testing. Basic knowledge of linear control theory and thermal systems is preferred.

For those interested, please email Dr. Jie Cai at cai40@purdue.edu.