Just off the coast of the Pacific Northwest lies the Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ); odds of a very large CSZ earthquake occurring in the next 50 years is estimated to be about 37%. A CSZ seismic event has the potential to cause wide scale damage not just to the power...
Generating abundant, renewable energy from Earth’s oceans is an attractive option for meeting increasing energy demand. Marine renewable energy also comes with the variability of renewable sources, which impact the reliability and power quality of the electrical grid. On a transmission-level, this dissertation looks at ensuring reliability of the power...
Unlike other biosensing, electrochemical biosensor has the advantages of robustness, easy miniaturization, excellent detection limits, and capability in handling small analyte volumes. The detection selectivity of the electrochemical biosensors is mainly supported by bioreceptors. However, these receptors always suffer from the performance variation caused by the environment and the thermal-...
The electrical grid is a key component of the Nation's critical infrastructure. Its continuous and reliable operation is of vital importance; any system-wide disruption would have a debilitating impact on crucial services, public health and safety, the economy, and the national security of the United States.
High-impact low-frequency events pose...
Load flow studies are one of the most essential engineering applications for grid operators because they provide a clear picture of the operating conditions of the power system. Traditionally, the load flow problem is assumed to be deterministic; that is, the system variables contain no randomness. Unfortunately, this assumption is...
The Pacific Northwest is part of the "Ring of Fire," which is well-known for heavy seismic activity. Numerous active faults in the area have encouraged electric grid managers in the region to more deeply contemplate and proactively intervene to support grid resilience. This research introduces Monte Carlo (MC) based power...
The dissertation focuses on the engineering of light-matter interaction using plasmonic nanoparticles and metamaterials to achieve enhanced luminescence and based on which to improve the performance of biosensing and light-emitting technologies. We designed and fabricated a spectrum of nanostructures to exhibit particular dispersion relations capable of controlling the spontaneous emission...
Model Predictive Control (MPC) has previously been investigated on ocean waveenergy converters (WEC) to improve the amount of power captured, while respectingthe system constraints. Previous research done in the same area, focused onbuilding a control scheme by using the knowledge of the past & current statesof the system and predicting...
We demonstrated a low-cost and high-sensitivity DNA detection method using quantum dot-fullerene based molecular beacons (MBs) and magnetic nanoparticles. The MB tethered magnetic nanoparticles can be well dispersed in analytes for efficient DNA capture and concentrated by an external magnetic field for enhanced fluorescence signal detection. The detection requires only...
We demonstrated a sensitive biosensor based on plasmonic metal composite nanostructures. The device can be fabricated and duplicated with ease using a novel nanoprinting technology which allows precise transfer of metal nanostructures without complicated lithography processes. The design featured by its unique material composition and sub-wavelength structures maximizes the exposure...