News and Highlights

• [June 2025] BREAKING: Our lab has been awarded the CAREER award from NSF. Huge thanks to the DCSD program and brilliant members of our team at University of Oklahoma who made this possible! we are excited for what's ahead as we continue to understand modeling, estimation, and control challenges in battery storage systems with composite electrodes.

Award link: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2442042&HistoricalAwards=false

• [Jan. 2025] The Energy Systems and Controls Lab welcomes PhD students Wonoo Choo and Zhicheng Xu!

• [Aug. 2024] The Energy Systems and Controls Lab welcomes PhD student Mehrab Hasan! 

• [June 2024] Congratulations to PhD student Jorge Espin for the acceptance of his paper, entitled "Safety-Driven Battery Charging: A Fisher Information-guided Adaptive MPC with Real-time Parameter Identification", for presentation at the 2024 Modeling, Estimation and Control Conference (MECC)!

• [May 2024] The Energy Systems and Controls Lab has received $88k funding from the Translational Research Projects (TRPs) under the Accelerating Research Translation program from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Our team will study prognostics for second-life batteries. ESCL PhD students Yuichi Kajiura and Jorge Espin are leading the efforts.

• [Apr. 2024] Huge congratulations to Logan Scott for successfully defending his MS thesis!

• [Mar. 2024] The Energy Systems and Controls Lab, in collaboration with OU Parking and Transportation, was awarded $180k to install electric vehicle charging stations (Level 2 and DC fast chargers) on OU Norman campus. This is supported by ACOG’s Public Fleet Conversion Grants Program. Let's GO ELECTRIC!

• [Mar. 2024] Dr. Zhang, along with colleagues from Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, has been awarded $30k from the AME Research Equipment Program to fund the acquisition of a glovebox for battery research.

• [Jan. 2024] Congratulations to PhD students Yuichi Kajiura and Jorge Espin for the acceptance of their respective papers for presentations at 2024 American Control Conference (ACC)!

• [Jan. 2024] The Energy Systems and Controls Lab has been awarded $2.3 millions by the Department of Energy (DOE) Vehicle Technologies Office to deploy shared autonomous electric vehicles in Oklahoma tribal communities. 

• [Jan. 2024] ESCL has received funding from Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST) for $218k to explore advanced imaging technologies applied to Li-ion batteries, in collaboration with Baker Hughes.

• [Oct. 2023] Dr. Zhang has received funding for $292k by National Science Foundation (NSF) EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Improvement Track-4 program to establish collaboration with Oak Ridge National Lab (ORNL) on next-generation batteries. Highlights from OU VPRP: https://www.ou.edu/research-norman/news-events/2024/two-ou-researchers-receive-nsf-epscor-research-fellowships 

• [Aug. 2023] The Energy Systems and Controls Lab welcomes graduate researcher Logan Scott. 

• [June 2023] Dr. Zhang attends Baker Hughes' Energy Frontiers Summit as a panelist for Advanced Sensors and Controls.

• [Jan. 2023] The Energy Systems and Controls Lab welcomes PhD student Jorge Espin. 

• [Aug. 2022] The Energy Systems and Controls Lab welcomes PhD student Yuichi Kajiura.