Saptarshi Bhattacharya

Research Staff Member,

Optimization and Control Group,

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL),

Richland, WA.

Contact: sbhattacharya.ecse@gmail.com

Recent News:

  • April 2019: Two posters on ongoing work at PNNL on grid value proposition of Marine-Hydro-Kinetics (MHK) presented at Marine Energy Technology Symposium (METS) 2019, Washington DC, USA. Presented by: Jan Alam (PNNL) and Rebecca O'Neil (PNNL). Happy to be part of this team!
  • March 2019: Awarded the Allen B. Dumont Prize (2019) by the Dept. of Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA. This prize is awarded to a graduate student who has demonstrated high scholastic ability and has made a substantial contribution to that field.
  • January 2019: US-Patent on "Ensuring Fairness in Thermal Grids" granted. For more details, please see https://patents.google.com/patent/US10169836B2/en Many thanks to Dr. Vikas Chandan and Dr. Vijay Arya for their support.
  • January 2019: Participated as a speaker in NSF-RCN's "International Workshop on Putting Sustainability into Convergence: Connecting Data, People and Systems"- held at National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore.
  • Joined Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) as a Research Staff Member in Richland, WA.
  • October 2018: Our paper "Economic Operation of Thermostatic Loads under Time Varying Prices: an Optimal Control Approach" was accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy. Thanks Prof. Kar and Prof. Chow for your support.
  • August 2018: Graduated with PhD (Elec. Eng.) from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. A big thanks to everyone who supported me through the arduous but enjoyable journey.
  • July 2018: Our paper "Demand Response for Thermal Fairness in District Heating Networks" was accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy. Thanks Prof. Kar, Dr. Chandan and Dr. Arya for your support.




I graduated with a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the Department of Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA. My primary thesis adviser was Dr. Koushik Kar. I was also guided by Dr. Joe H. Chow and Dr. Aparna Gupta. I am currently with the Optimization and Control group under the Energy and Environment Directorate at PNNL.

My broad research interest is in applying power systems kn, control theory, learning based approaches and optimization techniques to solve various problems in the domain of energy science. Specific topics of interest include renewable energy integration, smart grid applications (such as buildings-to-grid energy exchange, demand response, electric vehicle charging, smart metering) and big data analytics. I have been an intern at IBM Research Labs in Bangalore, India during consecutive summers of 2015 and 2016 where I worked with the Smarter Planet Solutions Group in problems relating to thermal energy management in district heating networks. At IBM, I was mentored by Dr. Vikas Chandan and Dr. Vijay Arya.