CEEE attracted me for its world-class reputation and disruptive innovations in the HVAC area, such as thermoelastic cooling, 3D printed miniaturized heat exchanger and personalized cooling robots. You are surrounded by brilliant and warm-hearted faculty and labmates who are always reachable when troubles come in life and research.
Lei Gao is a Ph.D. student in the EEHP research group, supervised by Dr. Radermacher and Dr. Hwang. Prior to attending University of Maryland, he received his undergraduate and master's degrees (majoring in Energy, Power System, and Automation) both from Xi'an Jiaotong University, China in 2013 and 2016, respectively.
His thesis topic is optimum design and operation of combined cooling heating and power system under uncertainty, with the goal of achieving higher energy efficiency, lower economic cost and fewer environment impact without losing robustness.
"CEEE attracted me for its world-class reputation and disruptive innovations in the HVAC area, such as thermoelastic cooling, 3D printed miniaturized heat exchanger and personalized cooling robots," Gao said. "After joining this big family, I'm lucky to have the chance to learn from both experiential and modeling-oriented research, those are valuable and memorable experiences in my Ph.D. program."
Gao plans to complete his Ph.D. program in May 2022 and then would like to continue working and researching in academia in the same or cross-discipline research area. During his Ph.D. program, it excited him coming up with ideas and finding ways to realize them. "Those moments drove me to clarify my goal and encouraged me to pursue a research position in the near future, first as a postdoc and then search for a faculty position in the future after that," he said. After he receives his Ph.D., Gao plans to stay in the United States for three to five years to hone the necessary skills and qualifications for his career goals.
When asked what he enjoys most about CEEE he said that he "likes the center for its international environment, enthusiastic attitude, and open mind". "You are surrounded by brilliant and warm-hearted faculty and labmates who are always reachable when troubles come in life and research. Moreover, the semi-annual consortium meetings provide students' opportunity to learn how industrial works and what is needed in the real engineering world."
In his spare time, Gao like to watch movies, road trips, do sports and learn new things with his friends. You can keep up with his research work and ideas on his personal website https://leigao-ceee.github.
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