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Chakrabortty selected for NSF CAREER Award

Dr. Chakrabortty 
Dr. Chakrabortty

Dr. Aranya Chakrabortty, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at North Carolina State University, has received a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The award is one of the highest honors given by the NSF to young university faculty in science and engineering.

NSF will provide $400,000 in funding over a five-year period to support Chakrabortty’s research project entitled, “Wide-Area Control of Large Power Systems Using Distributed Synchrophasors: Where Network Theory Meets Power System Dynamics.”

Chakrabortty’s research in this project will develop the mathematical foundations for tracking and controlling the dynamic behavior of large electric power grids so that catastrophes such as blackouts and voltage collapse can be prevented. Synchronized phasor measurements of electrical voltages and currents that provide a high-resolution view of various complex events occurring in a power system will be used to develop these control algorithms.

“The primary challenge behind wide-area control of power systems is the daunting size of such systems, which typically consist of thousands of generators, loads, control equipment, etc.,” Chakrabortty said. “Our research will employ model reduction methods to reduce the size of large grids, yet retaining their important dynamic properties, and develop an arsenal of robust and resilient controllers that can efficiently control these dynamics when faced with major disturbance attacks such as the 2003 Northeast blackout.”

Chakrabortty will disseminate his results through educational field trips, conference tutorials, and workshops with invited speakers from the Research Triangle Park. He will promote undergraduate research for minority engineering students via the NSF Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management (FREEDM) Systems Center headquartered at NC State.

Chakrabortty received his BE in electrical engineering from Jadavpur University in India in 2004. He received his MS and PhD in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, NY in 2005 and 2008, respectively.