Electrical Engineering Ph.D. Student’s Research Recognized

The research of Akintonde Abbas, an Electrical Engineering Ph.D. student at UNC Charlotte, has won first place in the UNC Charlotte Center for Graduate Life 3-Minute Thesis competition, and first place in a Duke University energy research poster competition.

A student of Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Badrul Chowdhury, Abbas’s presentation on how home air conditioning systems can play a role in preventing power outages won the 2020 3-Minute Thesis (3MT) competition coordinated by the Center for Graduate Life (CGL). His presentation titled “What if your HVAC unit could prevent a major power outage?,” is based on his research exploring the use of customer-side resources for services supporting both transmission and distribution grids.

Abbas also won first prize at the Duke University Energy Week research poster presentation competition held in November 2020. The competition is one of the main events of the annual Energy Week, and is open to academic researchers and industry professionals. Posters presentations feature original, energy-related research, including scientific findings, engineering breakthroughs, new business models and policy analysis. Abbas’s poster focused on comparing the usage of grid-scale batteries and the control of flexible loads for combined value-added services.

Abbas began his doctoral studies at UNC Charlotte in 2018. To date he has published seven papers about his research.

“The work is going well,” Abbas said. “I’m excited about the results were achieving, and very optimistic that we will continue to make progress.”