Rensselaer Assistant Professor Leila Parsa has been named a winner of the Office of Naval Research 2009 Young Investigator Program.

As part of the award, Parsa will receive a three-year, $500,000 research grant for applying her investigations into the design and control of energy and power electronics converters toward the development of new shipboard power systems of interest to the U.S. Navy and its Office of Naval Research.

“Dr. Parsa’s work represents the leading edge in the development of future energy sources and systems, which is of obvious importance to society at large and one of the department’s strategic objectives in research and education,” said Kim Boyer, head of the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering (ECSE). “We are extremely proud of her contributions to date, and equally proud of her potential as recognized by the highly prestigious ONR Young Investigator Award.”

For the Navy, Parsa will help to develop a monitoring, fault detection, and reporting system to identify the faults in the shipboard electromechanical energy converters and power electronics converters. The system will also include post-fault control strategies that enable the remaining healthy parts of the faulted system to operate continuously and safely until maintenance is possible. The end result is safer, more reliable ships.

Parsa joined the ECSE department at Rensselaer in 2005.  Her research spans a wide array of topics in the field of energy, including energy harvesting and power management for portable electronic devices, power electronics converters, electric drives, and electromechanical energy converters for various applications including future renewable energy systems, shipboard power systems, avionics, and hybrid electric vehicles. In 2007, she won the IEEE Industry Applications Society Outstanding Young Member Award, and in 2006 won the IEEE Industry Applications Society Transactions Paper Award.

Parsa received her master’s degrees in electrical engineering from the Iran University of Science and Technology in Tehran, and earned her doctorate in electrical engineering from Texas A&M University.

The ONR Young Investigator Program started in 1985, and winners are “considered among the top academic researchers in the country.” The program seeks to identify and support young academic scientists and engineers who show exceptional promise for doing cutting-edge research.