Prof. Yue Cao Energy Systems Group @ OSU

Past Students

PhD Students


Alastair Thurlbeck joined the group as a PhD student in September 2018. He received an MEng degree with honours of the 1st class in Electronics and Electrical Engineering from the University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK, in May 2018. Alastair’s MEng degree project was undertaken with Curtis Instruments in Livermore, CA, USA. In addition to his 5 month project with Curtis Instruments, Alastair has been a summer intern with Arqiva in Winchester, UK in 2015 and was a project assistant with the University of Glasgow in the summer of 2018. Alastair was awarded the Gilbert Cook Prize in 2018, the William Dawson Bursary in 2015 and the Reid Foster prize in 2014 by the University of Glasgow. Alastair was a recipient of the Diamond Jubilee Scholarship throughout his MEng degree, awarded by the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) in 2013. He had two-time internship with Amazon Prime Air in Seattle, Washington, in 2020 and 2021.
Alastair completed the PhD in September 2022 and moved onto a full-time Research Scientist position at the DOE National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) in Denver, Colorado.

Postdoc Scholars


Dr. Niraja Swaminathan joined the group as a Postdoctoral Fellow from Nov. 2019. She received MS/PhD in Electrical Engineering with Dr. Lakshminarasamma at Indian Institute of Technology - Madras (IITM), India, in 2019. She received BS in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Anna University, India, in 2012 and was awarded the 13th rank among 5418 candidates graduated. She was a recipient of a SERIIUS - MAGEEP award to pursue collaborative work with a SERIIUS partner organization in 2014. Dr. Niraja has been an invited reviewer for IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, IET Power Electronics and IEEE Annual Conference of the Industrial Electronics Society - IECON since 2018. Her current research interests include solar PV/battery fed power conditioners, digital control for power converters, and maximum power point tracking for solar PV fed applications.
Niraja completed the term in June 2021 and moved onto University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign as a Senior Postdoc while still chasing the dream to become a faculty member.

Saad Shaikh joined the group as a M.S. student in Fall 2021. He graduated in Electrical Engineering from the College of Engineering Pune, India, in Summer 2021. He has done internships in Varroc, Larsen & Toubro, and Bajaj Auto where he worked on onboard chargers, medium voltage switchboards, and magnetic circuit designs. His research interests are power electronics, electric vehicles, microcontrollers, magnetic circuits, and power systems. His leisure activities are reading, driving, and following motorsports.

Trenton Kilgore joined the group in January 2019 as an undergraduate assistant and graduated with BS-EE in 2020, and is now an MS student. Trenton was awarded the IEEE PES Scholarship for the 2019/2020 school year. He is focusing his studies on power electronics and thermal management, with a specific focus on SiC semiconductors. He had an internship with Microsemi/Microchip in Bend, Oregon, in 2020, where he gained experience in SiC devices. Outside of his career, he enjoys traveling, hiking, and working on classic cars.
Trenton completed MS in March 2022 and moved onto a full-time electrical engineer position at Daimler Trucks North America in Portland, OR (Daimler is the parent company of Mercedes-Benz).
 

Derek Jackson joined the group in September 2019. He attended Oregon State University and received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering with a minor in Computer Science. Derek’s research interests are focused on power electronics related to electric vehicles and unmanned aerial vehicles, including electric motors and drives. He participated in the MECOP dual internship program at Daimler Trucks North America (subsidiary of Daimler-Mercedes) and Blount International, both in Portland, Oregon, where he gained experience with power systems. 
Derek completed MS in Spring 2021 and moved onto the PhD program at OSU after passing the qualifying exam at the same time.

Kyle Gulan received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering as well as a Certificate in Hybrid Electric Vehicles from Michigan Technological University in 2017. Most of Kyle's past professional experience is in the automotive world where he has worked internships with General Motors, Polaris, and Taylor-Dunn. His research interests include electric motors and drives, power electronics, and hybrid electric vehicles.
Kyle graduated with his M.S. in Spring 2019

Visiting Students/Scholars

 
We are honored to host Prof. Jing Sun of University of Michigan-Ann Arbor for the Fall 2021 term as part of her sabbatical leave. Prof. Sun is an IEEE Fellow and Member of National Academy of Inventors. She is a world renowned scholar in Control with applications to transportation electrification and renewable energy. She is the lead PI of our ongoing DOE ARPA-E SHARKS project.


Sebastian Tengvall was an exchange M.S. student from Technical University of Denmark (DTU) during Spring 2019. He received his B.S. degree in electrical engineering at DTU in January 2018. Sebastian’s focus area is Switch Mode Power Supplies for audio amplifiers and thereby also class D amplifier designs. He has also focused on loudspeaker design and digital signal processing, thereby completing his knowledge of the entire audio chain.
Sebastian graduated in 2019 and is currently a hardware engineer at Rovsing A/S in Denmark.

Undergraduate Students

Bailey Sauter joined the group in Summer 2020. He is currently a B.S. student in Electrical Engineering. His areas of interest are renewable energy and electric vehicles. Bailey has two years of experience as an undergraduate TA for the department of EECS. He intends to attend graduate school upon the completion of his B.S.
Bailey completed BS in June 2022 and moved onto PhD study in power electronics at Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, with Prof. Dragan Maksimovic.

Trenton Kilgore was an undergraduate assistant from Jan. 2019 to June 2020. He focused his studies on power and energy systems, within which his largest areas of interest are electric motors and power generation.
Trenton graduated with B.S. in Electrical Engineering in Spring 2020. He is currently a graduate student in Prof. Cao's group.

 
Thomas Navidi* received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (UIUC), Champaign, IL, USA, in 2016, where he was a research assistant for the Grainger Center for Electric Machinery and Electromechanics. He is currently pursuing Ph.D. in electrical engineering with concentration in power and energy at Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, USA. Mr. Navidi has been a Power Engineering Intern with Bechtel Corporation and IBM Corporation. He was a recipient of the Grainger Power Engineering Award - top graduate from UIUC upon graduation.

Bradford Kearbey* received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (UIUC), Champaign, IL, USA, in 2017, where he was a research assistant for the Rolls-Royce Power Flow project. He is currently working as an electrical engineer at Burns & McDonnel in Chicago. Mr. Kearbey has been a power systems engineer intern with Eaton Corporation. He was a recipient of the Grainger Power Engineering Award - top graduate from UIUC upon graduation. He was also a winner of the national IEEE PES student scholarship.


Andrew Smith* expects a B.S. degree in computer engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (UIUC), Champaign, IL, USA, in 2018, where he was a research assistant for the Rolls-Royce Power Flow project. Mr. Smith has been an embedded systems engineer intern with Continental Automotive.


Jeffrey Weinberg* expects a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (UIUC), Champaign, IL, USA, in 2018, where he was a research assistant for the Grainger Center for Electric Machinery and Electromechanics. Mr. Weinberg was selected for the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) summer fellowship in 2016.

*Students advised during Prof Cao's Ph.D. at Univ. of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign.