(r to l): Pallavi Madhav Kulkarni, master's student in electrical and computer engineering, and Dionysios Aliprantis, professor of electrical and computer engineering

A team of Purdue ECE-affiliated researchers have won the Best Paper Award of the 2020 IEEE Power & Energy Conference at Illinois (PECI). The first author on the paper, entitled “Autonomous Power Dispatch for a Deep Space Vehicle Power System,” is ECE grad student Pallavi Madhav Kulkarni. Co-authors are Prof. Dionysios Aliprantis, and ECE alumni Benjamin Loop (BSEE ’00, MSECE ’02, PhD ECE ’05) and Ning Wu (PhD ECE ’06), who are currently with PC Krause and Associates (PCKA).

The project was funded by the NASA STTR program, which funds the research, development, and demonstration of innovative technologies that fulfill NASA needs as described in the annual Solicitations and have significant potential for successful commercialization. The paper details the development of an algorithm to determine the optimal operation of the electric power system of a deep space vehicle.