In the present era, due to environmental concerns and predictable deficiency of fossil-fuels in the near future, energy sustainability, reliability and security are of utmost importance. Motivated by this scenario, my research focuses on control of energy and transportation systems. Essentially, I apply control theory tools for the management of the energy and transportation systems in order to: 1) improve the overall energy efficiency and reliability, 2) tighten energy security and, 3) maintain sustainability.

Batteries are one of the key enablers for modern/futuristic sustainable energy and transportation systems. Intelligent management of batteries utilizing the knowledge of battery electrochemistry can potentially lead to improved energy and power capacity, and longer life. Apart from batteries, ultracapacitors are also becoming popular as complementary energy storage devices due to their high power density and longer life. The effective operation of such ultracapacitors heavily depends on optimal and health-conscious management. Therefore, real-time control, estimation and diagnostics of batteries and ultracapacitors play a pivotal role in sustainable infrastructures. In this thrust area, we are developing real-time algorithms for advanced battery/ultracapacitor management systems. These algorithms essentially provide information about internal states and parameters (e.g. State-of-Charge, State-of-Health) and various faults in batteries and ultracapacitors.

My other research interest deals with cyber-physical aspect of the modern/futuristic transportation systems. The interaction of cyber and physical components of the modern transportation networks is increasing the capabilities of the overall vehicle network. However, at the same time this is posing a challenge in maintaining the system safety and reliability. This fact calls for advanced management systems in the vehicles that are capable of maintaining reliable and safe operations under different forms of physical faults and communication failures. In particular, we are exploring the design of fail-safe management systems for connected vehicle networks.

The third research area originates from the afore-mentioned applied thrust areas where several of the application systems are modelled by Partial Differential Equations (PDEs). Motivating examples are batteries, ultracapacitors, transportation networks etc. We are developing theoretical tools for PDE fault diagnosis that are: 1) based on simple design and tuning, 2) suitable for real-time implementation and, 3) robust to uncertainties. Such theoretical tools will find interesting applicability in several safety- and reliability-critical domains such as advanced manufacturing, intelligent transportation and smart power grids.