Milad Shojaee - ECE PhD Student of the Month - November 2022
Milad Shojaee is a PhD candidate in the Helen and John C. Hartmann Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at NJIT. He is currently working at Networked Controls and Intelligent Diagnostics (NCID) Laboratory under the supervision of Professor Mohsen Azizi. His research interests include decentralized control of renewable energy generation systems.
What do you think would be an impactful move in your research area?
Although renewable energy generation systems have had outstanding impact on the generation-load balance, they have introduced new issues and challenges in the control of the voltage and frequency. Since renewable-based systems use power electronic units, the total system inertia decreases significantly which in turn affects the system stability. In addition, with the proliferation of microgrids, the interconnection couplings among the generation systems become stronger which jeopardize the system stability. Therefore, the focus of my research has been to design decentralized robust controllers so that the closed-loop system is robust against the parameter variations in the system as well as the coupling strength among the generation systems.
Tell us about a mesmerizing moment since you joined NJIT?
A mesmerizing moment I can recall during my time in the ECE department is when I started to work on the photovoltaic (PV) unit in the FMH-109 lab. The design and troubleshooting of PV systems have been so fascinating to me that I may consider them as my future career. Another exciting moment would have to be the ECE PhD stories contest where we can not only express our own ideas and viewpoints about different topics, but also learn from other researchers in the ECE department and maybe use their ideas in our own work.
Where do you hope to see yourself in a few years?
I hopefully see myself working at a top company related to my field of study where I can enjoy working with a group of motivated people and learn from them. I would also like to teach and transfer my knowledge to other people, either through in-person or online teaching. Besides career goals, I would like to visit other countries in the world as much as I could to have a better experience about other cultures.
As the 1st prize winner of the ECE PhD Stories contest Fall 2022, please share your thoughts on the role of creative thinking in research.
I believe creative thinking is one of the essential pillars of any high-level research. Sometimes, we deal with situations where we must come up with new or even unusual ideas to address a problem. Even sometimes novel ideas do not have to be perfect at first but can give us new ways of approaching a problem. The most important thing is that we should not be afraid of taking risks and trying unorthodox ideas. Otherwise, we may be stuck in our current ideas which may not be efficient enough.