Lab Director
Vijay Modi
Biosketch CV
Vijay Modi is a Professor in Columbia University’s Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Earth & Environmental Engineering, and in the Climate School. He is the director of the Quadracci Sustainable Engineering Laboratory (QSEL) . In the last decade, his laboratory, QSEL, has carried out pioneering work in digital mini-grids that integrate electricity supply/demand monitoring, dynamic allocation of energy/power resources to individual customers and the use of IoT for system, battery, customer commercial account management with integration of communication and controls. QSEL has developed network expansion tools for electric utilities in low-resource settings and data-driven analysis of such utilities for demand estimation and forecasting. The lab is currently developing data-driven models for electrification of heating and transport.

Team

The Lab brings together a diverse set of talents who work in collaboration to engineer solutions to development issues. From designers who understand user needs and talented software engineers to development practitioners and researchers, the expertise at the lab is both broad and deep.
Richard Quadracci
Quad Graphics (Ph.D. at Columbia, 1993)
Edwin Adkins
Coordinator - Energy Projects
Yuezi Wu
Graduate Student Researcher (PhD track)
Hasan Siddiqui
Graduate Student Researcher (PHD Track)
Aftab Zindani
Staff Research Associate
Yinbo Hu
Graduate Student Researcher (PhD Track)
Joel Mugyenyi
Graduate Student Researcher (PHD Track)
Ning Ding
Graduate Student Researcher (MA Track)
Sally Green
Graduate Student Researcher (MS Track)
Zoe Hightower
Undergraduate Assistant (BA Track)
Vladimir Pyltsov
Graduate Student Researcher (MS/PHD Track)
Vongaishe Mutatu
Graduate Student Researcher (PHD Track)

Alumni

Naveen Gopan
Jonah Schaechter-Santander
Alexander Peile
Zafrul Islam
Ibraheam Ali
(Ph.D. at Columbia, 2023)
Weifan Jiang
Vivek Kumar
Nikhil Mehta
Zhiyuan Fan
Poojan Parekh
Meredith Coulis
Terence Michael Conlon
Maxar Technologies (Ph.D., 2023)
Sally Simone Fobi Nsutezo
Microsoft AI for Good (Ph.D., 2022)
Noah Rauschkolb
The Brattle Group (Ph.D., 2014)
Shengxi “Max” Yuan
(Ph.D. at Columbia, 2019)
Akhilesh Ramakrishnan
Ji Jia
Inceptio Technology
Roy Han
CrossCompute
Troy Hodges
Jack Bott
Hernan Figueroa
Columbia University
Matt Zebiak
Grad Student UC Berkeley
Naichen Zhao
The World Bank
Viktor Roytman
Woven Planet
Abdi Dahir
Electronic Arts
Gordon Shaw
SDGC/A
Chris Tan
Electric Objects
Bianca Howard
Assistant Professor of Mech. Eng., Columbia (Ph.D., 2014)
Jon Wohl
Michael Waite
ACEEE (Ph.D. at Columbia, 2016)
Jonathan Carbajal
Demand Energy
Chris Natali
Square
Shaky Sherpa
NYC Health
Prajjwol Gautam
Moses Katembu
Mark Johnston
Brittany Wright
Benedetta Piantella
NYU
Roger Wong
ONA
Larry Weya
ONA
Martijn van de Rijdt
Enketo
Prabhas Pokharel
ONA
Denis Papathanasiou
Peter Lubell-Doughtie
ONA
Rahul Kitchlu
WB
Candice Heberer
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Kate Freeman
WB 
Dickson Ukang'a
ONA
Jonathan Demierre
Elliot Cohen
Rocky Mountain Institute
Jiehua Chen
QED
Salah Chafik
CRED Staff
Matt Berg
ONA
Nathan Stodola
International WELL Building Institute
Jeff Shrader
Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs, CU
Aly Sanoh
World Bank (Ph.D. at Columbia, 2012)
Lily Parshall
Edeniq (Ph.D. at Columbia, 2009)
Mitchell Lee
First Solar
Selin Kocaman
Bilkent University (Ph.D. at Columbia, 2014)
Justin Elszasz
Consultant
Zaiming Yao
Pamela Sanchez
Myf Ma
The Intercept
John Humphrey
Joe Woo
Brett Gleitsmann
Brandon Ogle
Belinda Archibong
Barnard (Ph.D. at Columbia, 2014)
Scott Raymond
Jacob Winiecki
CGAP
Ivan Willig
Clubhouse Software
Tamer Wasfy
Indiana-Purdue University
Jessika Trancik
MIT
Jonathan Thompson
AECOM
Daniel Soto
Sonoma State University
Ahmed Shehata
WorleyParsons Resources and Energy
Aly Sanoh
World Bank
Francisco Sebastian Rodriguez-Sanchez
SES
Stephen Pothier
George Washington University
Dana Pillai
Consulting 
Kristine Oppelstrup
Management Consultant 
Andrew O'Grady
Bronx Early College Academy
Gautam Nair
Yale ISPS 
Norbert Mueller
Michigan Tech
Shashank Mohan
Rhodium Group 
Dean Modroukas
Innoveering Oil Services
Rajesh Menon
Harbinger 
Andrew Marder
Princeton 
Susan Kum
SUNY Buffalo 
Alex Hoffman
Americal Pubic Power Corporation
Sandy Eapen 
Alex Dorey
Harvard 
Susan Doll
Appalachian State University
Reuben Bushnell
PennState PhD student and Lunar Lion team
Matt Basinger
AE Consulting
Arnaud Algrin
BNP Paribas
Samina Akbari
Film 
Carlos Abad
Postdoc Stanford
Alex Zvoleff
Conservation International
Jiang Zhe
U of Akron (Ph.D. at Columbia, 2002)
Jian-Hong Zhang
(Ph.D. at Columbia, 1996)
Jonathan Thompson
Ahmet Shehata
(Ph.D. at Columbia, 1999)
Dana Pillai
Delos Labs
Andrew O’Grady
(Ph.D. at Columbia, 2011)
Edmundo Nunez
Saunders Trade and Technical (Ph.D. at Columbia, 2001)
Matthew McCarthy
Lehigh (Ph.D. at Columbia, 2006)
Liz Martin
Live @ 365
Dean Madroukas
(Ph.D. at Columbia, 2005)
Carlos Abad Lopez
Stanford (Ph.D. at Columbia, 2015)
Panagiotis Kotsidas
Singapore (Ph.D. at Columbia, 2012)
Malcolm Knapp
The Engineer Accelerator
Hildigunnur Jónsdóttir
DONG Energy 
Jianchun Huan
CFD Analysis (Ph.D. at Columbia, 1994)
Songbae Hong
LBL (Ph.D. at Columbia, 2003)
Drew Pitney Higginson
UCSD PhD Program 
Chris Gnafakis
Credit Suisse
Bethany Fisher
NREL
Hisham Faoud
Egypt
Olivier Eiff
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Roxana Cosmaciuc
UNICEF
Dulyachot Cholaseuk
Thammasat (Ph.D. at Columbia, 2001)
Mingyong Chen
Caterpillar (Ph.D. at Columbia, 2001)
Qian Chen
(Ph.D. at Columbia, 2000)
Hayri Cabuk
Veterans Health Administration (Ph.D. at Columbia, 1991)
Arindam Bhattacharjee
Olivebooks
Matthew Basinger
Consulting (Ph.D. at Columbia, 2010)

Partners

We work with diverse partners, ranging from small non-profit organizations to large government bodies, mainly working in the developing world.