NEWS

We are excited to announce the 2021 Infrastructure Seed Award program awardees and share a report from 2020 award recipient Dr. Caitano da Silva. The Infrastructure Seed Award program is designed to support transformative research and capacity building across New Mexico’s higher education institutions in emerging smart grid areas (e.g., STEM, computer science, electrical and computer engineering, cyberinfrastructure, and workforce development). The intent of these awards is twofold: 1) pursuing novel research thrusts that lead to increased research productivity and new external funding opportunities, and 2) increasing access to research experiences, particularly for undergraduate students from under-represented groups. 

2020 Award Report

Towards Quantitative Understanding of Lightning Disruptive Effects for Protection of SMART Grids
Lead Investigator: Caitano L. da Silva
New Mexico Tech

Dr. Caitano da Silva's seed award focused on advancing the scientific understanding of lightning physics to devise better grid infrastructure protection mechanisms.
Read the final report

2021 Award Recipients 

Securing Smart Grid Enabled Home Area Networks with Retro-reflective Visible Light Communication
Lead Investigator: Sihua Shao, Co-Investigator: Jun Zheng
New Mexico Tech

Optimal Microgrid Operations via Distributed Resource Estimation and Microgrid Network Design
Lead Investigator: Kooktae Lee
New Mexico Tech

Assessing the Economic and Environmental Impacts of Alternative Electric Vehicle Policy Scenarios in New Mexico
Lead Investigator: Jamal Mamkhezri
New Mexico State University

Drone Assisted Smart Grid Networks for Emergence Communications
Lead Investigator: Xiang Sun
University of New Mexico