November 16^th and 17^th, 2017 - “Fireside Chats”

Female scientists engage in one-on-one or group chats on their careers and paths of life.

On November 16^th and 17^th, the Research Training Group “Energy Status Data - Informatics Methods for its Collection, Analysis and Exploitation” gives you the opportunity to individually talk to renowned scientists, all female, on life and career planning in academia. We make this offer to all students at the Bachelor or Master level, PhD students or young scientists from any discipline, be they male or female. The event will take place on the Campus South premises. Specifics will be fixed and announced in due course.

If you are interested:

While the three researchers below work in the research areas of Computer Science and Energy, your line of work or area of study does not have to be in these areas.

If you are interested in participating in the fireside chats, please contact sekretariat.boehm∂ipd.kit.edu before October 8^th. Earlier mails will be considered first when organizing the chats. Feel free to specify your preferences in your mail, e.g. if you preferred a one-on-one talk or a group chat, or if you preferred a researcher that has children. We will collect all mails and organize the fireside chats accordingly.

The scientists you can talk to:

Gabriela Hug, ETH Zürich, Switzerland

Prof. Dr. Gabriela Hug received the M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Switzerland, in 2004 and the Ph.D. degree from the same institution in 2008. In 2007, she also received a degree in higher education teaching from ETH Zurich. After her PhD, she worked in the Special Studies Group of Hydro One in Toronto, Canada and from 2009 - 2015 she was an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, USA. Currently, she is an Associate Professor at the Power Systems Laboratory at ETH Zurich. She has received a number of awards including the IEEE PES Outstanding Young Engineer Award (2013), the National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2013) and the CMU CIT George Tallman Ladd Award (2014). Her research is dedicated to control and optimization of electric power systems.

Ferdinanda Ponci, RWTH Aachen

Prof. Dr. Ferdinanda Ponci graduated with a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Politecnico di Milano (Italy), in 2002. She joined the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of South Carolina, (USA), as an Assistant Professor in 2003, and became Associate Professor in 2008. In 2009, she joined the Institute for Automation of Complex Power Systems, E.ON Research Center, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany, where she is currently a Professor for “Monitoring and distributed control for power systems”. She is currently engaged in research on automation and advanced monitoring of active distribution systems.She is a Senior Member of the IEEE, a member of the Administration Committee of the IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society and the Liaison with IEEE Women in Engineering.

Sylvie Thiébaux, ANU, Australia

Prof. Dr. Sylvie Thiébaux is a professor of computer science at the Australian National University and Data61 (formerly NICTA). Her research interests are artificial intelligence, optimisation, and their applications to energy systems especially to power system planning and operations, grid integration of renewables and storage, demand response, and energy-efficient buildings. She currently leads the CONSORT project which is developing and trialling distributed optimisation and control methods enabling consumer-owned battery systems to simultaneously provide value to their owners and support to the grid, and which involves multiple industry and university partners and is funded by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA). Sylvie's current and past professional activities include being an associate editor of the Artificial Intelligence journal (AIJ) and of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR), a Councilor of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), an Advisory Board Member of the ANU Energy Change Institute, the President of the board of directors of International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS), and the Director of the Canberra Laboratory of NICTA (150 researchers and PhD students).

Prof. Dr. Gabriela Hug

Prof. Dr. Ferdinanda Ponci

Prof. Dr. Sylvie Thiébaux