Anyuat, John Arou

Anyu­at John Arou, is a lec­tur­er of Elec­tri­cal Engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Juba in Juba, South Sudan. He is also the CEO of the Renew­able Ener­gy Coun­cil of South Sudan (RECOSS).

His Research focus­es on Pow­er Sys­tems Stud­ies; espe­cial­ly pow­er qual­i­ty Con­trol in vari­able renew­able resources (VRE) – Based Micro­grids. Arou grad­u­at­ed from Nde­j­je Uni­ver­si­ty, Kam­pala, Ugan­da, and received the Mas­ter of Sci­ence in Elec­tri­cal Pow­er from New­cas­tle Uni­ver­si­ty, New­cas­tle Upon Tyne, UK and cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing Doc­tor of Engi­neer­ing in Elec­tri­cal & Com­put­er Engi­neer­ing from the Yoko­hama Nation­al Uni­ver­si­ty, Yoko­hama, Japan.

Con­tact: anyuat2000@​gmail.​com

Kersey, Jess

Jess Kersey is a fourth-year PhD stu­dent broad­ly inter­est­ed in tech­nol­o­gy, reg­u­la­tion, and pol­i­cy to improve ener­gy access and cli­mate adap­ta­tion efforts across mul­ti­ple geo­gra­phies includ­ing East Africa, Latin Amer­i­ca, and island nations. Jess is also a research affil­i­ate of the Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab and con­sults with ESMAP, the Asian Devel­op­ment Bank, and the Glob­al Ener­gy Alliance for Peo­ple and Plan­et.

Her cur­rent work focus­es on decon­struct­ing urban/​binary spa­tial cat­e­go­riza­tions and high­light­ing how exam­in­ing ener­gy pover­ty with greater spa­tial nuance reveals access bar­ri­ers for the grow­ing pop­u­la­tions in infor­mal and/​or peri-urban com­mu­ni­ties. She leads the Spot­light Kam­pala project, which is a mul­ti-stake­hold­er research part­ner­ship to under­stand ener­gy access afford­abil­i­ty, safe­ty, for­mal­i­ty, reli­a­bil­i­ty, and qual­i­ty in infor­mal settlements.

Jess holds dual bachelor’s degrees in chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing and polit­i­cal sci­ence from Vir­ginia Tech. She pre­vi­ous­ly worked as an ener­gy engi­neer with AECOM’s Ener­gy busi­ness line pro­vid­ing tech­ni­cal, project man­age­ment, and busi­ness devel­op­ment sup­port for renew­able ener­gy, ener­gy effi­cien­cy, and sus­tain­abil­i­ty projects. She has a diverse engi­neer­ing back­ground which includes expe­ri­ence in ener­gy, con­struc­tion man­age­ment, and dis­as­ter relief both domes­ti­cal­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly includ­ing work in Haiti, Pana­ma, El Sal­vador, the US Vir­gin Islands, and Iraq.

Martha Hoffmann

In her doc­tor­al stud­ies in Ger­many, Martha is work­ing on the real­iza­tion of a social­ly just and accept­ed ener­gy tran­si­tion. For this, she plans to add social and eco­log­i­cal aspects to the cur­rent tech­ni­cal and eco­nom­i­cal focus with­in ener­gy tran­si­tion plan­ning process­es. The devel­op­ment of an inte­grat­ed ener­gy sys­tem mod­el will assess the impact of ener­gy mar­ket reforms on com­mu­ni­ty and house­hold lev­el as well as their impli­ca­tions for dis­trib­u­tive jus­tice. Her inter­ests, broad­ly, encom­pass, ener­gy jus­tice, the ener­gy tran­si­tion, ener­gy mod­el­ing, and Open Source meth­ods and strategies.

Her work is super­vised by Prof. Dr. Pao-Yu Oei from the Depart­ment of Ener­gy and Envi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment at Europa-Uni­ver­sität Flens­burg (EUF).

Martha wrote her mas­ters degree the­sis  at the TU Berlin in the research group Off-Grid Sys­tems at the Rein­er Lemoine Insti­tut and devel­oped the sim­u­la­tion tool Off­grid­ders, which sizes elec­tri­fi­ca­tion options. Fol­low­ing  this, from 2019 to 2021, she worked as a researcher at the Rein­er Lemoine Insti­tut and was respon­si­ble for the project man­age­ment with­in the scope of the H2020 research project E‑LAND, in which RLI devel­ops and applies a sim­u­la­tion tool for sec­tor cou­pled ener­gy sys­tems (Mul­ti-Vec­tor Sim­u­la­tor).

Martha’s fel­low­ship is financed through the C‑BEAR+ project (link: https://reiner-lemoine-institut.de/en/c‑bear/) , fund­ed by the Fed­er­al Min­istry for Eco­nom­ic Affairs and Cli­mate Action of Germany.

She will be a vis­it­ing schol­ar at RAEL for Spring 2023

Con­tact: martha.​hoffmann@​rl-​stiftung.​de

Joyceline Marealle

Joyce­line is a Tan­zan­ian who holds a bachelor’s degree in chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Rochester.

Her research inter­est lies in ener­gy decen­tral­iza­tion, diver­si­fi­ca­tion, eco­nom­ics and pol­i­cy mak­ing to empow­er women and improve the stan­dard of liv­ing in East Africa.

She cur­rent­ly works at the Renew­able & Appro­pri­ate Ener­gy Lab­o­ra­to­ry on Off grid sys­tems in remote areas in East Africa.

Pri­or to her MS, Joyce­line interned at MIT and con­duct­ed research on alu­minum bat­ter­ies for elec­tric vehi­cles. Addi­tion­al­ly, since 2017 she has been work­ing to empow­er mar­gin­al­ized young women of New Hope For Girls Orga­ni­za­tion in Tan­za­nia. Among her recent projects is her team win­ning a $10,000 Davis Project for Peace Fel­low­ship to estab­lish a green­house farm­ing busi­ness to act as a sus­tain­able income gen­er­a­tor for the girls.

Sam Miles

Sam Miles is a Ph.D. stu­dent in the Ener­gy and Resources Group, and in the Renew­able and Appro­pri­ate Ener­gy Lab at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Berkeley.

His research focus is at the inter­sec­tion of the scal­a­bil­i­ty chal­lenge for elec­tric­i­ty mini-grids and the socio-eco­nom­ic char­ac­ter­is­tics of urban­iza­tion in Africa, par­tic­u­lar­ly for the arti­sans and entre­pre­neurs who con­sti­tute the ‘pro­duc­tive’ users of such ener­gy sys­tems. He will engage with these ques­tions as an INFEWS (Inno­va­tions at the Nexus of Food, Ener­gy, and Water Sys­tems) NSF scholar.

Pre­vi­ous to life at ERG, Sam worked as a free­lance writer cov­er­ing tech­nol­o­gy in emerg­ing mar­kets, an edu­ca­tor at the African Lead­er­ship Uni­ver­si­ty in Mau­ri­tius, and as an inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment con­sul­tant based in West Africa. He holds an MA in Inter­na­tion­al Ener­gy from Sci­ences Po — Paris and a BA in Ethics, Pol­i­tics, and Eco­nom­ics from Yale.

Annelise Gill-Wiehl

At ERG Annelise has con­tin­ued the study of com­mu­ni­ty ener­gy solu­tions, with both cook­ing and com­mu­ni­ty exten­sion ser­vices focal areas for her ana­lyt­ic and field studies.

Annelise Gill-Wiehl stud­ied envi­ron­men­tal engi­neer­ing and inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame.  There, she worked with the Keough School of Glob­al Affairs’ Asso­ciate Dean for Pol­i­cy and Prac­tice, Sara Siev­ers, through the Kel­logg Inter­na­tion­al Schol­ars Pro­gram. They inves­ti­gat­ed how to incor­po­rate the pref­er­en­tial option for the poor into pol­i­cy. Gill-Wiehl’s own research inves­ti­gates ener­gy infra­struc­ture and the bar­ri­ers to tech­nol­o­gy adop­tion. Gill-Wiehl and Pro­fes­sor Siev­ers pilot­ed a Com­mu­ni­ty Tech­nol­o­gy Pro­gram in Shi­rati, Tan­za­nia through a Kel­logg Research Grant.

While an under­grad­u­ate she interned for the Foun­da­tion of Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment in Masa­ka, Ugan­da. Addi­tion­al­ly, Gill-Wiehl con­duct­ed rough­ly 200 house­hold ener­gy sur­veys through an Expe­ri­enc­ing the World Fel­low­ship to inves­ti­gate ener­gy infra­struc­ture in Shi­rati. Her research inter­ests are at the inter­sec­tion of engi­neer­ing and pol­i­cy in the East African con­text. She hopes to pur­sue a PhD to fur­ther inves­ti­gate these issues.

The­sis Title: Pilot of Com­mu­ni­ty Tech­nol­o­gy Work­ers in Shi­rati, Tanzania

Gbemisola “Gbemi” Akinsipe

My inter­ests range from the inte­gra­tion of renew­ables into exist­ing grids,the pos­si­bil­i­ty of indi­genes (espe­cial­ly women) in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties pro­duc­ing their own pow­er or at least under­stand­ing its work­ings and the inter­ac­tion between sci­ence and pol­i­cy mak­ing in devel­op­ing coun­tries. I would love to study in the Renew­able & Appro­pri­ate Ener­gy Lab­o­ra­to­ry (RAEL) or the Ener­gy Mod­el­ing, Analy­sis and Con­trol Group (EMAC)

Yu, Hilary

Hilary received her B.A. in Gov­ern­ment and Bio­log­i­cal Sci­ences, with a con­cen­tra­tion in Ecol­o­gy and Evo­lu­tion­ary Biol­o­gy in the lat­ter, from Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty, where she grad­u­at­ed in 2015. At ERG, Hilary is inter­est­ed in explor­ing the sci­ence-law nexus and the fac­tors – polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, and social – that inform the trans­la­tion of sci­ence into leg­is­la­tion. Her aca­d­e­m­ic inter­ests addi­tion­al­ly include top­ics in sus­tain­able devel­op­ment, cli­mate change edu­ca­tion, restora­tion ecol­o­gy, water and ener­gy effi­cien­cy, and envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice. Hilary was pre­vi­ous­ly involved in research­ing ener­gy and wildlife issues as an intern with the NRDC’s North­ern Rock­ies office, and in the year before com­ing to ERG, she spent some time pur­su­ing anoth­er pas­sion, work­ing in Malawi on a death penal­ty sen­tence rehear­ing project. Hilary is a Gates Foun­da­tion Mil­len­ni­um Fellow.

Kuan, John Akol Akol

Akol Kuan is a civ­il engi­neer­ing major and Maser­Card Foun­da­tion Schol­ar at UC Berkeley.

In RAEL, Akol is focus­ing on the design and oper­a­tion of clean ener­gy mini-grids for refugee com­mu­ni­ties, with a project focused on the UNHCR Kaku­ma Refugee Camp.  Kaku­ma is a town in north­west­ern Turkana Coun­ty, Kenya. It is the site of a UNHCR refugee camp, estab­lished in 1969. The pop­u­la­tion of Kaku­ma town was over 180,000 in 2016, hav­ing grown from around 8,000 in 1990.

Patel, Serena

Ser­ena is an Ener­gy Engi­neer­ing major at UC Berke­ley, where she is engaged in num­ber of activ­i­ties, including:

Work­ing at the Stu­dent Envi­ron­men­tal Resource Cen­ter under the Zero Waste Research Cen­ter to help food ven­dors achieve zero waste goals, cre­at­ing a cul­ture of zero waste with­in the stu­dent body through edu­ca­tion, and con­duct­ing research on com­postable plas­tics recycling.

Dur­ing the Spring 2018 semes­ter Ser­ena is lead­ing a group of 9 stu­dents in work­ing with the local non­profit, Grid Alter­na­tives, to install solar pan­els on low income fam­ily homes in Sali­nas, Cal­i­for­nia dur­ing spring break. Her respon­si­bil­i­ties include co-facil­i­­tat­ing a class about ener­gy access, equi­ty, ener­gy pol­icy, and solar ener­gy tech­nol­ogy in Cal­i­for­nia as well as coor­di­nat­ing hous­ing, fundrais­ing, and trans­porta­tion to the location.

In RAEL Ser­ena is focus­ing on the design, oper­a­tion, pow­er sys­tems opti­miza­tion, and social impacts of the clean ener­gy mini-​​grid pow­er­ing the Human Needs Project in Kib­era, Kenya.”