Mechanical Engineering Group Wins Best Paper Award

A team of researchers in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science recently won best paper award at the IEEE Green Technologies Conference.

The Conference aimed to address securing green and clean energy sources to protect the environment and help build a more resilient power grid. The theme of this year’s conference was “smart cities,” which looked to increase efficiency and improve quality of life by creating systems that reduce costs and improve services.

The winning paper, titled “Break-even Analysis of Bettery Energy Storage in Building Considering Time-of-Use Rates,” was written by lead author Mucun Sun, a PhD student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Sun works under Dr. Jie Zhang, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, also an author on the paper. Other authors on the paper included UT Dallas PhD student Chih-Lun Chang, and Ali Mehmani and Patricia Culligan, both from Columbia University.

The paper proposes a cost-effective method for creating energy storage systems for residential and commercial buildings.

“This is the third best paper award received by our research group in the past year,” Zhang said. “I’m very proud of our students for their efforts and continuing achievements.”

Recently, Cong Feng, another doctoral student under Zhang received the 2017-2018 SAS-IIF Research Award from the International Institute of Forecasters (IIF). Feng also received a best student paper award at the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Big Data Computing, Applications and Technologies.