- Date: March 31, 2016
Awarded to: Andrew Knyazev
Research Areas: Control, Optimization, Dynamical Systems, Machine Learning, Data Analytics, Communications, Signal Processing
Brief - Andrew Knyazev selected as a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) for contributions to computational mathematics and development of numerical methods for eigenvalue problems.
Fellowship honors SIAM members who have made outstanding contributions to the fields served by the SIAM. Andrew Knyazev was among a distinguished group of members nominated by peers and selected for the 2016 Class of Fellows.
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- Date: Thursday, June 2, 2016
Location: Norton's Woods Conference Center at American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Cambridge, MA
MERL Contacts: Elizabeth Phillips; Anthony Vetro Brief - A celebration event to mark MERL's 25th anniversary will be held on Thursday, June 2 at the Norton's Woods Conference Center at the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in Cambridge, MA. This event will feature keynote talks, panel sessions, and a research showcase. The event itself is invitation-only, but videos and other highlights will be made available online. Further details about the program can be obtained at the link below.
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- Date: November 11, 2015 - November 12, 2015
Where: University of Connecticut
MERL Contacts: Christopher R. Laughman; Scott A. Bortoff; Hongtao Qiao
Research Area: Data Analytics
Brief - MERL Researchers Scott A. Bortoff, Chris Laughman and Hongtao Qiao attended the North America Modelica User's Group Meeting, hosted by the University of Connecticut, November 11-12, 2015. Scott Bortoff gave the Keynote Address entitled "Using Modelica in Industrial Research and Development," and Chris Laughman and Hongtao Qiao each presented a paper on modelling of HVAC systems. The Meeting attracted approximately 80 Modelica users from a diverse set of companies and universities including United Technologies, Johnson Controls and Ford. Use of Modelica is accelerating in North America, lead by largely by automotive and similar "systems manufacturing" type companies.
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- Date: Friday, November 6, 2015
Location: Mitsubishi Electric Cooling & Heating
MERL Contact: Christopher R. Laughman
Research Area: Data Analytics
Brief - Chris Laughman of MERL and Kevin Miskewicz of MEUS-HVAC led a webinar on Friday, November 6 with over 20 leading HVAC industry trade publications on new products that are being released, as well as the role that MERL plays in advancing the forefront of technology within Mitsubishi Electric. Titled "Inventing the Future of VRF (and Other Neat Stuff)", they discussed the innovations embodied in the new L-generation City-Multi system, as well as trends in the HVAC industry and some recently published MERL research in the HVAC area.
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- Date: September 21, 2015
MERL Contacts: Scott A. Bortoff; Christopher R. Laughman Brief - MERL researchers Scott Bortoff, Dan Burns and Chris Laughman attended the 11th Annual Modelica Conference in Versailles, France. Modelica is a computer language for modelling and simulation of multiphysical systems. There were 421 attendees, with representatives from Toyota, automobile companies, European universities and companies like Dassault. Conference topics included a plenary on cyber-physical systems modelling by Prof. Sangiovanni Vincentelli of UC Berkeley, new libraries for modelling HVAC systems, automobile systems and buildings, and research results for new solvers. An important trend is virtual modelling and simulation of building thermodynamics (scaling up to city districts), automotive systems (autonomous vehicles), and especially Factory Automation: Dassault is investing heavily in this area, focusing on smaller customers, with tools for 3D virtual modelling of assembly lines including machine dynamics (robotics), and in partnerships with Siemens and other European FA companies.
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- Date & Time: Tuesday, August 4, 2015; 12:00
Location: Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories
MERL Contacts: Elizabeth Phillips; Jinyun Zhang Brief - To celebrate "Women in Science at MERL," a luncheon event was organized on August 4. Eleven female interns, three female researchers, and female members of HQ staff, interns, hosts/managers and MERL executives participated in that event. All female interns introduced their research projects and their positive experiences at MERL; female researchers shared their own career development stories; and at the end all discussed how to be successful in the field of science. Every participant was inspired to continue contributing to the future of science.
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- Date: July 3, 2015
MERL Contacts: Daniel N. Nikovski; Yebin Wang; Stefano Di Cairano; Arvind Raghunathan; Avishai Weiss Brief - MERL researchers presented 10 papers at the American Controls Conference, in Chicago, USA. The ACC is one of the most important conferences on control systems in the world. Topics ranged from theoretical, including new algorithms for Model Predictive Control and Co-Design, to applications including spacecraft control and HVAC systems.
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- Date: June 25, 2015
MERL Contact: William S. Yerazunis
Research Area: Data Analytics
Brief - The CRM114 Discriminator, an open-source spam filter / text classifier created by William Yerazunis in MERL's Data Analytics group, continues to turn up in interesting places - and apparently one of them is in the US Department of Transportation's process for analysis of car safety defect reports.
Although CRM114 is usually used as a spam filter, CRM114 has been used to analyze resumes for jobseekers, scanning outgoing emails to detect accidental confidential information leaks, perusing blogs for relevance, scanning syslog files for interesting events, and now, apparently, searching complaints sent to NHTSA to find safety-related vehicle malfunctions.
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- Date: February 13, 2014
MERL Contacts: Hongbo Sun; Daniel N. Nikovski
Research Area: Data Analytics
Brief - Mitsubishi Electric Corporation announced that it has developed energy loss-reduction technology that uses algorithms for fast analysis of three-phase electricity developed by MERL to establish optimal coordination of power-distribution grids for reductions in energy loss and power-generation costs. The technology was achieved under Mitsubishi Electric's Smart Grid Demonstration Project.
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- Date: February 10, 2014
MERL Contacts: Jonathan Le Roux; Daniel N. Nikovski; Anthony Vetro Brief - Mitsubishi Electric Corporation demonstrated an ultra-simple HMI for in-car device operation using algorithms developed by MERL to predict user actions and destinations.
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- Date & Time: Tuesday, July 30, 2013; 12:00 PM
Speaker: Ramon Granell, Oxford University
MERL Host: Daniel N. Nikovski
Research Area: Data Analytics
Abstract 
We show that real electricity-use patterns can be distinguished using a Bayesian nonparametric model based on the Dirichlet Process Mixture Model. By modelling the load profiles as discrete counters we make use of the Dirichlet-Multinomial distribution. Clusters are computed with the Chinese Restaurant Process method and posterior probabilities distributions estimated with a Gibbs sampling algorithm.
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- Date: July 19, 2013
Where: International Conference on Machine Learning and Data Mining in Pattern Recognion (MLDM)
MERL Contacts: Hongbo Sun; Daniel N. Nikovski
Research Area: Data Analytics
Brief - The paper "Smart Meter Data Analysis for Power Theft Detection" by Nikovski, D., Wang, Z., Esenther, A., Sun, H., Sugiura, K., Muso, T. and Tsuru, K. was presented at the International Conference on Machine Learning and Data Mining in Pattern Recognion (MLDM).
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- Date: June 17, 2013
Where: American Control Conference (ACC)
MERL Contacts: Scott A. Bortoff; Stefano Di Cairano; Yebin Wang; Arvind Raghunathan Brief - The papers "Sub-optimal Control Design of a Semi-active Vibration Reduction System" by Wang, Y. and Utsunomiya, K., "Adaptive Estimation of State of Charge for Lithium-ion Batteries" by Fang, H., Wang, Y., Sahinoglu, Z., Wanda, T. and Hara, S., "Vehicle Yaw Dynamics Control by Torque-based Assist Systems Enforcing Driver's Steering Feel Constraints" by Zafeiropoulos, S. and Di Cairano, S., "Speed Profile Optimization for Optimal Path Tracking" by Zhao, Y. and Tsiotras, P., "Real-Time Energy-Optimal Trajeactory Generatin for a Servo Motor" by Zhao, Y., Wang, Y., Bortoff, S.A. and Ueda, K., "Global Optimization of Multi-period Optimal Power Flow" by Gopalakrishnan, A., Raghunathan, A.U., Nikovski, D., Biegler, L.T. and "Semismooth Equation Approach to Network Utility Maximization (NUM)" by Bai, L. and Raghunathan, A.U. were presented at the American Control Conference (ACC).
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- Date: June 16, 2013
Where: REHVA World Congress (CLIMA)
MERL Contact: Daniel N. Nikovski
Research Area: Control
Brief - The paper "A Method for Computing Optimal Set-Point Schedule for HVAC Systems" by Nikovski, D., Xu, J. and Nonaka, M. was presented at the REHVA World Congress (CLIMA).
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- Date: June 10, 2013
Where: International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS)
MERL Contact: Daniel N. Nikovski
Research Area: Optimization
Brief - The paper "Operational Planning of Thermal Generators with Factored Markov Decision Process Models" by Nikovski, D. was presented at the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS).
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- Date: May 15, 2013
Where: IEEE Wireless Power Transfer Conference (WPTC)
MERL Contacts: Bingnan Wang; William S. Yerazunis
Research Areas: Applied Physics, Electric Systems
Brief - The paper "Wireless Power Transfer with Artificial Magnetic Conductors" by Wu, J., Wang, B., Yerazunis, W.S. and Teo, K.H. was presented at the IEEE Wireless Power Transfer Conference (WPTC).
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- Date: May 15, 2013
Where: Proceedings of IEEE
MERL Contacts: Bingnan Wang; William S. Yerazunis Brief - The article "Wireless Power Transfer: Metamaterials and Array of Coupled Resonators" by Wang, B., Yerazunis, W. and Teo, K.H. was published in Proceedings of IEEE.
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- Date & Time: Wednesday, May 8, 2013; 12:00 PM
Speaker: Vikrant Aute, University of Maryland
MERL Host: Christopher R. Laughman
Research Area: Data Analytics
Abstract 
Heat exchangers are a key component in any air-conditioning, heat pumping and refrigeration system. These heat exchangers (aka evaporators, condensers, indoor units, outdoor units) not only contribute significantly to the total cost of the system but also contain the most refrigerant charge. There is a continued interest in improving the designs of heat exchangers and making them more compact while reducing the cost. Compact heat exchangers help improve system performance, reduce power consumption and lower the first costs. Due to the lower internal volume, they hold lower refrigerant charge which in turn results in lower environmental impact.
In the simulation based design and optimization of compact heat exchangers, there are two main challenges. The first challenge arises from the use of computationally expensive analysis tools such as Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The second challenge is the effect of scales. The use of CFD tools can make the optimization infeasible due to computing and engineering resource limitations. Furthermore, during CFD analysis, certain simplifications are made to the computational domain such as simulating a small periodic segment of a given heat transfer surface. In this talk, three technologies are introduced that assist in addressing these issues. These technologies are (1) Approximation Assisted Optimization, (2) Parallel Parameterized CFD, and (3) Multi-scale modeling of heat exchangers. These technologies together help reduce the computational effort by more than 90% and engineering time by more than 50%. Two real world applications focusing on air-to-refrigerant and liquid-to-refrigerant heat exchangers will be discussed, that demonstrate the application of these technologies.
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- Date: March 25, 2013
Where: National Convention of the Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ)
MERL Contacts: Hongbo Sun; Daniel N. Nikovski
Research Area: Data Analytics
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- Date: March 14, 2013
Where: Proceedings of the IEEE
MERL Contacts: Bingnan Wang; William S. Yerazunis
Research Areas: Applied Physics, Electric Systems
Brief - The article "Wireless Power Transfer: Metamaterials and Array of Coupled Resonators" by Wang, B., Yerazunis, W. and Teo, K.H. was published in Proceedings of the IEEE.
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- Date: January 18, 2013
Where: Symposium of the Society of Instrumentation and Control Engineers of Japan (SICE)
MERL Contact: Daniel N. Nikovski
Research Area: Data Analytics
Brief - The paper "Fast Runcurve Optimization based on Markov Decision Process" by Fujii, S., Yoshimoto, K., Ueda, K., Takahashi, S. and Nikovski, D. was presented at the Symposium of the Society of Instrumentation and Control Engineers of Japan (SICE).
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- Date: October 30, 2012
Where: IEEE International Conference on Power System Technology (POWERCON)
MERL Contacts: Hongbo Sun; Daniel N. Nikovski
Research Area: Data Analytics
Brief - The paper "Decoupled Three-Phase Load Flow Method for Unbalanced Distribution Systems" by Sun, H., Dubey, A., Nikovski, D., Ohno, T., Takano, T. and Kojima, Y. was presented at the IEEE International Conference on Power System Technology (POWERCON).
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- Date: October 29, 2012
Where: IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation (ISAP)
MERL Contacts: Bingnan Wang; William S. Yerazunis
Research Area: Electric Systems
Brief - The paper "Power Delivery Optimization for a Mobile Power Transfer System based on Resonator Arrays" by Yerazunis, W., Wang, B. and Teo, K.H. was presented at the IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation (ISAP).
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- Date: October 17, 2012
Where: ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Conference
Research Area: Data Analytics
Brief - The paper "Decentralized Finite-Time Stabilizing Feedback Network Control" by Zhao, Y. was presented at the ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Conference.
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- Date: October 16, 2012
Where: Electrical Systems for Aircraft, Railway and Ship Propulsion (ESARS)
MERL Contact: Daniel N. Nikovski
Research Area: Data Analytics
Brief - The paper "Markov Decision Processes for Train Run Curve Optimization" by Nikovski, D., Lidicky, B., Zhang, W., Kataoka, K. and Yoshimoto, K. was presented at Electrical Systems for Aircraft, Railway and Ship Propulsion (ESARS).
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