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Alumni   Ethan (Zhiyuan) Cao

Ethan (Zhiyuan) Cao

Zhiyuan Cao received his B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in 2014. He is currently a PhD student with main focus on Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) applications in smart grid

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Jesse Cha

Jesse Cha

Eun Sang "Jesse" Cha received his B.Eng degree in Mechanical Engineering from UCLA in 2015. He got his M.S degree in Automotive Mechatronics from Cranfield University in 2017. He is currently a Ph.D. student in SMERC with research interests in motion control and path planning for Autonomous Electric Vehicles.

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Yu-Wei Chung

Yu-Wei Chung

Yu-Wei Chung received his B.Eng degree in Mechatronic Technology from National Taiwan Normal University in 2008. He got his M.S degree in Applied Mechanics from National Taiwan University in 2010. He is currently a Ph.D. student in SMERC with the research interest in Electric Vehicle Charging System.

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Behnam Khaki

Behnam Khaki

Behnam Khaki received his B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Chamran University of Ahvaz in 2006. He got his first M.Sc. degree in power systems from Amirkabir University of Technology in 2009, and his second M.Sc. degree in optimal control of hybrid electric vehicles from West Virginia University in 2015. From 2009 to 2013, he was working for consultant engineering companies, where he was involved in several projects on high/medium voltage substations, motor control centers and water treatment plant automation.

He has been working on his Ph.D. at UCLA since 2015, and his research interests are control, modeling, and stability analysis of microgrids and power system protection.

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Mostafa Majidpour

Mostafa Majidpour

Mostafa Majidpour received his M.S. degree in Control Engineering and his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Tehran in 2008 and 2006, respectively. He is interested in concept extraction and pattern discovery in data, which depending on the context, is referred to as Machine Learning, Pattern Recognition, Data Mining, or System Identification.

He was a founding member and CEO of a start-up company that developed software packages for regional electricity utilities from 2006 to 2007. In 2011 and 2012, he was a Research Intern and Independent Consultant for Fujitsu Laboratories of America on Electric Vehicle Charging Algorithms and Building Level Load Prediction.

He has demonstrated a strong research background in Computer Vision and Image Processing as well, with his M.S. thesis on Face Recognition and projects on Medical Imaging Analysis.

Currently, he is a PhD candidate in the UCLA Smart Gird Energy Research Center, developing Statistical and Machine Learning algorithms to analyze various data in the context of smart grid such as Electric Vehicles Charging and Demand Response.

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Hamidreza Nazaripouya

Hamidreza Nazaripouya

Hamidreza Nazaripouya is a PhD candidate at UCLA SMERC. He received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Tehran in 2007. In 2010, he obtained a M.S. degree in Power Electronics from the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, and M.S. degree in Power System from Louisiana State University in 2013. Besides his academic education, Nazaripouya is an experienced power system engineer with industry background. In particular, he has worked for Entergy Corporation, owner and operator of power plants with approximately 30,000 MW of electric generating capacity. In addition, Nazaripouya has conducted and participated in several power engineering projects, including designing the medium and low voltage power distribution panel for a 5MW plant, optimal placement of Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) for fault observability, analysis of the effect of power backflow on network protectors, employing of FACTS devices to improve power system stability, parallel operation of inverters, and grid integration of photovoltaics (PVs) and Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESSs) among others.

His research interests include control and integration of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs), application of power electronics in power system, microgrid technologies, electric vehicle (EV), and BESS integration.

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Yingqi Xiong

Yingqi Xiong

Yingqi Xiong got his B.S.degree in mechanical engineering from Northeastern University in China, 2012. He received his M.S. degree from Northwestern University, Evasnton in 2014. He was an intern in Cisco System Inc. Currently he is a PhD student in UCLA Smart Gird Energy Research Center, working on Electric Vehicle Charging System hardware and firmware design.

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Bin Wang

Bin Wang

2008-2012, Bachelor's Degree from Jilin University, Vehicle Engineering.

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Yubo Wang

Yubo Wang

After graduating from SMERC in Winter 2017, Yubo becomes a research scientist at Siemens, Corporate Technology. Yubo has also interned with Southern California Edison, Advanced Technology with a focus on wide area monitoring and control. His research interests include stochastic modeling, decentralized optimizations, IoT, and data analysis. Personally, he enjoys badminton and sailing.

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Tianyang Zhang

Tianyang Zhang

Tianyang Zhang received his Sc.M. in Engineering from Brown University in 2014. He received his Laurea degree in Automotive Engineering from Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy in 2011. He was a production engineer at Ariston Thermo Group in Osimo, Italy from 2011 to 2012. He is currently working on monitoring and control of EV charging stations, energy storage systems and renewable energy resources in smart grid.

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