Thriving Research
With interdisciplinary collaboration across different academic programs, CREATE supports the development of over 40 graduate students and emphasizes research that bridges academia and industry and promotes impactful, real-world solutions. By engaging students in interdisciplinary projects and industry collaborations, CREATE cultivates an environment where scholarly growth and innovative research thrive, preparing students to become leaders in their fields and driving forward advancements in science and engineering.
Resilient Power and Energy Systems
We use energy to heat/cool our buildings and homes, run our machines and electronics, and transport goods and people. Without energy, society as we know it would cease to exist. Yet, the use of fossil fuels for generating this energy during most of the period that modern society developed is unsustainable- fossil fuels are a finite resource, and their combustion is impacting global climate change with devastating consequences. CREATE will focus on the most fundamental and important long-term societal problem— how to enable modern society through sustainable and intelligent energy systems.
Emerging power and energy systems are undergoing wholesale changes due to rapid renewable energy integration driven by aggressive decarbonization and electrification policies in Vermont and beyond. To keep up with renewables, these systems will increasingly have to rely on sensors, data, optimization algorithms, and feedback control loops to ensure reliability, responsiveness, and resilience.
Faculty Lead
Mads Almassalkhi, Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Autonomy and Control
Autonomous technologies and control systems play pivotal roles in modern society across various domains: Transportation, manufacturing, healthcare, agriculture, energy, aerospace, and security and defense systems. Overall, autonomous technologies and control systems are transforming industries by increasing efficiency, reducing human error, improving safety, and enabling new capabilities that were previously unthinkable. In recent decades, engineered systems have become increasingly connected and complex and so the existing methods for control and decision making are no longer applicable. Motivated by the availability of vast amounts of data from these systems, CREATE will focus on research around data-driven control of complex systems.
Faculty Lead
Hamid Ossareh, Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Leading Researchers
Ensuring adequate safety protections exist for the humans who share their workspaces with industrial robots is a concern for Assistant Professor Luis Duffaut whose award-winning research is developing advanced control systems using a revolutionary data-driven approach.
Assistant Professor Espinosa's researchOur Research Facilities
Hybrid Solar Test Center facility
Develop and maintain a hybrid solar test center (HSTC) facility at the McNeil power plant to field-test new approaches to autonomous energy system development, optimization, and control.
Accelerated Testing Laboratory
Develop and create the Accelerated Testing Laboratory (ATL) on the ¶¶Òõ̽̽ campus for validating and testing energy systems and autonomous technologies for hybrid energy systems (HES), such as solar PV panels, energy storage, inverters, and electrolyzers.
Next-generation Energy Systems Simulation Testbed facility
Design and develop a Next-generation Energy Systems Simulation Testbed (NES2T) facility on the ¶¶Òõ̽̽ campus to facilitate both research and education in energy system resilience, autonomy, cyber-security, and optimization.
Autonomous and Intelligent Systems Research Laboratory (AIR Lab) facility
The Autonomous and Intelligent Systems Research Lab (AIR Lab) is driving the future of intelligent systems. Our research on data-driven and model-free estimation and control algorithms enable engineered systems to adapt to complex, real-world environments, pushing beyond traditional boundaries.
