Industry engagement is a key part of APEC mission and considered as one of the center strategic priorities. APEC Industry Engagement Strategy is catered towards the mission of the center by ensuring regular, mutually beneficial communication between APEC and a broad range of relevant industrial (and other) stakeholders. Such interactions are aimed to identify and prioritize industrial needs leading to new research and development avenues. The generated research knowledge and technology have been transferred to industry through industry‐academia colloquia, training workshops and demonstrations of the developed methods and tools. APEC has strong active engagement with numerous industrial partners and is continuously working to build on this partnership to engage and broaden industrial stockholders to boost the long‐term mutual activities focused on industry-based research, training workshops/courses, testing/validations and products development as follows:
Khalifa University’s Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) students Maryam Abbas Sajwani, Reem AlNuaimi, Khadeeja Khaled Hashem Mohamed Aljaberi, and Sumaya AlZubaidi of the ‘K-Drive’ design team under the supervision of Dr. Balanthi Abdul R Beig, Associate Professor, APEC,EECS, have entered the final round of the IEEE International Future Energy Challenge (IFEC) 2019 competition held on 28-30, July 2019 at the University of Wisconsin, US. The Khalifa University team is the only one from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region to be among the top 10 selected for the finals. An international student competition for innovation, conservation, and effective use of electrical energy, the IFEC is open to college and university student teams from recognized undergraduate engineering programs.
Figure: The BLDC drive designed by the ‘K-Drive’ SD team
Best student paper award, 5th Int. conf. on Electrical Engineering and Informatics, Bali, Indonesia, 2015.
KU students successfully designed and operated a smart crop growing system during APEC research-led senior design project.
Full-day workshop was conducted by MIT Professor Sreven Leeb on Jan 14, 2020. The workshop provided a hands-on lecture and laboratory workshop experimenting with a Programmable System on Chip signal processor like those finding increasing application for advanced aerospace systems.
As part of APEC center’s initiative on industry collaboration and knowledge transfer program, a workshop on has been conducted in collaboration with Opal RT Technologies, Canada, on the topic ‘Designing the Modern Electric Grid with High-End Real-Time Simulator Tools’. The workshop was conducted on 10th September, 2019 at ADRIC, KU SAN campus. The workshop covered a seminar on the various topics of hardware in loop (HIL) simulation related to power systems, especially on microgrids, followed by a demonstration of several experiments and test cases on microgirds.
The workshop has also covered various other topics related to power electronics and power systems. The event went on very interactively with a lot of interest from the research staff approaching Opal RT team with questions throughout the session. Below are key highlights and minutes from the session.
APEC organized a full-day workshop with Al-Ain Distribution Company (AADC). APEC presented its research capabilities as well as testing and training services based on the needs of AADC. Furthermore, APEC got the chance to know about recent projects and challenges within AADC operation, visit different places at AADC (e.g., training center, control room, etc.), meeting different groups (e.g, network planning, testing and protection, O&M etc.). Finally, the workshop served in advertising our graduate program as a group of UAEU student participated. The workshop took place on November 24, 2019.
The High-Voltage and Dielectrics Materials research group of the Advanced Power and Energy Center (APEC) at Khalifa University organized the 7th Research Symposium on High Voltage and Power Systems at Sas Al Nakhl Campus which took place on 13 February 2020.
