Spring 2021 Seminars

Speaker: Sarika Khushalani Solanki

Date: January 25th, 2021

Time: 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM

Place: Online via Zoom. Please fill this form to get the attendance instructions.

Abstract: Introduce the graduate seminar series and welcome students.

Speaker Bio: Biography: Sarika Khushalani Solanki received B.E. and M.E. degrees from India in 1998 and 2000 respectively. She received Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Mississippi State University, USA in 2006. She is currently an Associate Professor in Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, since August 2009. Prior to that, she worked for Open Systems International Inc, Minneapolis, MN as a Senior Engineer for three years. She has served as reviewer in National Science Foundation and Department of Energy and is past president of IEEE Distribution Systems Analysis Subcommittee and IEEE Career Promotion and Workforce Development Subcommittee and is editor of Transactions in Smart Grid. She is a recipient of Honda Fellowship award and NSF Career Award. Her research interests are Smart Grid, Power Distribution System, computer applications in power system analysis and power system control.

Speaker: Martin Dunlap

Date: February 1st, 2021

Time: 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM

Place: Online via Zoom. Please fill this form to get the attendance instructions.

Abstract: He will introduce the services and resources available through the WVU Libraries. These library resources may be critical to your graduate research.

Speaker Bio: He joined WVU in 1998 and has spent 10+ years working in the swamps of Florida as an environmental consultant. Since then he has worked in libraries first in Cleveland, Ohio and then here at WVU in various capacities. He recently got promoted to be the Engineering Librarian at WVU.

Speaker: WVU IT

Date: NA

Time: NA

Place: At your desk

Abstract: There is an online plagiarism tutorial at https://wvu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6W3rGjsAaEenYgd

Here are the steps:
View videos.
Take a self-test.
Repeat steps for each module.
Take the Plagiarism Avoidance Test.

How do you progress through this tutorial?
View videos or read material in a module. Take a self-test after reading and viewing materials in a module. This self-test is for practice and taking it will open the next module. Repeat steps for each module, five modules in all. After viewing / reading the material in each module and taking the self-tests, take the Plagiarism Avoidance Test.

Speaker: Rao Mikkilineni

Date: Monday, February 15, 2021

Time: 5:00 PM

Place: Online via Zoom. Please register here to get the attendance instructions.

Abstract: Digital computing structures composed of distributed and communicating software and hardware components fall into the category of a complex system where fluctuations in the demand for, or the availability of, resources required to execute the computations disturb their stability and performance. The fluctuations impact the resiliency and efficiency of the structure as the scale of components increase. In addition, when the system consists of a set of communicating processes that are concurrent and asynchronous, the emergence of global behavior depends upon the nature and the strength of the fluctuations. In this talk, we describe the theory and practice of applying the self-organizing and self-managing patterns to manage fluctuations, found in biological systems, to distributed digital computing structures and making them autopoietic machines. The term autopoiesis refers to a system capable of reproducing and maintaining itself. The theory and application of autopoietic machines allows us to design and build a new class of information processing systems that exhibit sentient, resilient and intelligent behavior. In this talk we explore how to build self-managing federated edge cloud network and deploy autopoietic federated AI applications to connect people things and businesses enabling global communication, collaboration and commerce with high reliability, performance, security, and regulatory compliance.

Bio:Rao Mikkilineni is a seasoned executive, technologist and board advisor who brings business perspectives and technology insights from four decades of professional experiences spanning at global corporations such as AT&T Bell Labs, Bellcore, US West, Network Programs, Fujitsu, and Hitachi Data Systems. He has been recognized in the industry for his innovations and business development in the areas of OSS and BSS at Bell Labs, AI and Expert Systems integration in Network Operations at Bellcore, Business Process Re-engineering at US WEST, introduction of Object Oriented Technology in transforming Legacy Telecom OSS and BSS at US West and Network Programs, introducing Storage Area Networking operation and Management at Hitachi and most recently demonstrating, a transformational multi-cloud workload operation and management product with a startup C3DNA. He published a paper in the Turing centenary conference proceedings dealing with Church-Turing thesis boundaries. (The Turing O-Machine and the DIME Network Architecture: Injecting the Architectural Resiliency into Distributed Computing (easychair.org)). He was featured in a cover story in the CIO review Magazine as pioneering an era of self-managing applications (https://magazine.cioreview.com/magazines/September2017/Application_Management/#page=10 ). He currently teaches at Golden Gate University, Dominican university of California, and pursues research on next generation information processing systems that are autopoietic.

Speaker: Jignesh Solanki

Date: April 12, 2021

Time: 5:00 PM

Place: Online via Zoom. Please register here to get the attendance instructions.

Abstract: Climate change is real and power grid must be protected against it. Recent blackout in Texas demonstrates the need for protection against harsh climate conditions in a power grid. There are multiple solutions that can be employed to reduce the damage and impact of such blackouts. The distributed microgrid system and bulk power islanding scheme may provide an answer to this problem. In this talk, role of microgrid and its control to protect against the system disturbances and cyber-attack will be presented. The performance of unknown input observer based microgrid control will be compared against benchmark controllers. Islanding is sometimes the only solution against blackout but currently the efficacy is limited due to computational speed to protect the bulk power system. The unprecedented data from Phasor Measurement Units and data mining algorithms have made ways to remove the hindrance of implementation of islanding schemes so that fast action can be employed, and blackout can be prevented. In this talk dynamic time warping based method and spectral clustering algorithm with strong Silhouette measure is utilized to determine the coherency amongst the generators for creating islands that result in a sustainable system are presented. The results are presented for benchmark systems like ISO-New England 39-bus system and WECC 179-bus system and compared against the results published using traditional methods.

Bio: Dr. Solanki is a faculty member in the Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering since 2009. He received his Ph.D. from Mississippi State University in 2006. He worked in Open System International Inc. as a senior engineer in Power System Research and Development department for several years after his Ph.D. His research interests lie in the area of distribution automation for smart grids and intelligent applications for power systems. He served as a chairman of the IEEE PES PEEC student activities subcommittee, where he was responsible for organizing student programs of student housing, student poster competition as well as student industry faculty luncheon program at IEEE PES general meetings and IEEE PES transmission and distribution conferences. During his time in the committee, he served 4600 national and international students. He also served as a chairman of the IEEE PES microgrid control taskforce and as a general chairman of the 49th North American Power Symposium, which was hosted by West Virginia University. He has served as a panelist for the National Science Foundation and Department of Energy. He has also hosted and conducted several panel sessions in several different international conferences. He was a recipient of the IEEE Multiagent Systems Working Group Award, in 2008 and received an IEEE PES recognition award of his service in 2012 and 2018. Dr. Solanki is also a recipient of Statler College Outstanding Educator Award.