What makes you a Difference Maker?
Bringing more renewable energy into power grids holds a lot of promise for dealing with the challenges of climate change and the lack of traditional fossil fuel. However, the energy system that relies more heavily on renewable energy also presents some big technological issues, such as the stability issues of the energy system. Therefore, with experience in power system modeling and control theory, I stepped into the research topic from 2019. In the past two years, I discovered defects in a longstanding theory, and I am pushing ahead with research that could provide evidence that my new approaches really do work better. So far, the results have proved very promising in simulation. Now, I and my colleagues are preparing to take a big next step: Testing the new approaches in real-world microgrid systems through collaboration with colleagues at the University of Texas-Austin and funding from the National Science Foundation.
Tell us about your leadership experience.
A valuable combination of training and experience has made me a particularly strong research student and that will carry over into my independent research and engineering career. My academic strength is clear from my transcript: GPA 4.0/4.0. During my first-year Ph.D. studies, I have demonstrated exceptional academic excellence from course studies, research contributions, to the successful Ph.D. qualifying in Nov. 2019. The committee members highly commented on my excellent work and recognized my great contributions in power systems and control theory.
My primary Ph.D. research focuses on the application of control theory in power electronics-enabled power systems. Traditional power systems modernize rapidly in recent years, especially with the high penetration of renewable energy resources and power electronics devices. However, the large-signal stability criteria for power electronics-enabled power systems are still an unsolved puzzle. For the first time, I developed a comprehensive investigation of large-signal stability in DC microgrids. The quality and breadth of my research are evident in my excellent publication record. I am very confident that my research findings will have a far-reaching impact on future power and energy systems.
What is your dream career or goal?
In fall 2018, I was offered a Ph.D. position in Prof. Wencong Su's group. I am very lucky to be the first and only female student in the EECE Ph.D. program. During the years I am spending in the Ph.D. program, I not only made high-quality and breadth research but also show my dedication to my work and my career ambition. I demonstrated outstanding leadership ability by my involvement in student and professional activities, such as being the reviewer of top journals. In addition, my preliminary research has directly contributed to two funded projects from DOE and DOD in 2019 and one funded project from NSF in 2020.
What is your most defining moment?
Up to now, I almost finished the third year of my Ph.D. In the three years, I gradually realize that being a researcher or research assistant means spending the entire career working on things that don't work. As we know, once something works it is no longer research. Most of the time, the research work is with the anxiety that comes from falling short of solving anything. This is really a challenge to me psychologically. Understanding and accepting the anxiety leads me to have a more peaceful and positive attitude to my research and future career path. To me, research has been an inalienable part of my life. In the future, I prefer to pursue an academic career path since I can follow my research interests and try to build my own long-term academic impacts. I hope I can find a faculty position or join a national lab after my Ph.D. graduation.
In fact, I failed many times when I worked on my project about the stability problem of DC microgrids. Originally, I planned to come up with an application based on an existing stability theory for nonlinear circuits, but when I built a simulation, I found something weird. At that point, I dug deeper and finally I discovered that the 60-year-old traditional method underlying a lot of research about circuit stability was flawed and incomplete. Then I began working on my own new theories.
After I submitted the first paper about this project, I received more than 40 comments. It made me crazy. I used to debate in my mind that if my idea was wrong. Finally, I am determined to calm down and check every technical detail they questioned, then answer them more clearly and carefully. I believe I am correct. I finished a very convincing response letter with more than 50 pages. In fact, after going through the harsh reviews, I become more confident about my research. Because I understand my work from more different perspectives and pay more attention to the details when I prepared for the response letter. Finally, my new theories were published in a prestigious IEEE journal successfully.