Akhila Kandivalasa - ECE PhD Student of the Month - March 2026
Akhila Kandivalasa is a PhD student in the ECE department working on observability for dynamic state estimation in power systems. She grew up near a thermal power station and was always fascinated how those "giant machines" operated. During her undergraduate studies, power systems remained one of her favorites.
Although she initially avoided control theory, her perspective changed during her master’s studies, where she realized how essential control is for power system operation. While working at IISc (a research institute in India), she developed an interest in state estimation after informally attending related lectures. As she explored dynamic state estimation, she noticed that observability remains a key limitation for practical implementation in industry. This realization motivated her current research on scalable observability methods for large power systems.
She finds joy in the little details of life and things around. She expresses the beauty of life through her poetry. She practices and teaches Kriya Yoga, an ancient form of Yoga for mindfulness.
What would you say that could be the next big thing in your area of research?
With increasing renewable integration and AI revolutionized data centers, power grids are becoming more dynamic and stressed. These changes can make systems more vulnerable to voltage instability and large-scale disturbances if not monitored properly. The obvious solution and breakthrough will be the practical implementation of dynamic state estimation at scale.
Observability being minimum requirement for DSE, developing computationally efficient and theoretically grounded observability tools could enable real-time dynamic monitoring and improve grid resilience in the face of emerging demands.
With a focus on power systems in your PhD study, how do you feel power systems engineering is related to control theories?
In many ways, power systems and control theory have evolved together. Historically, several advances in control were driven by practical challenges in power networks, including frequency regulation and voltage stability. Today, inverter-dominated grids depend even more on advanced control strategies for synchronization, stability, and dynamic performance.
Although the two communities sometimes operate in parallel, their foundations are deeply interconnected. My advisor has thoughtfully shaped our lab environment so that we do not view power systems and control theory as separate domains, but as intersecting and complementary fields.
Paper writing is painful but as they say - publish or perish. Your advisor is very diligent on training PhD students for writing and publication. Please share a thing or two on what you have learned from him about paper writing.
My advisor has taught me that clarity and structure are more important than complexity. He emphasizes that a good paper must be self-contained, and written from the reader’s perspective. Through his careful guidance and many detailed revisions, I learned that simplifying an idea without losing rigor is challenging. His patience and precision have shown me that articulation is as important as the research itself — ideas only create impact when they are communicated clearly.