Team Members

Michael Brambley, a Scientist in PNNL's Advanced Controls Technical Group, possesses more than three decades of academic and research experience related to energy technologies and policy. At PNNL, where he has been employed since 1987, Dr. Brambley has served in a variety of roles including principal investigator and research contributor, project and program manager, technical group leader, department chief scientist, and leader of several initiatives. Much his work at PNNL has focused on improving the actual operating efficiency of buildings and other energy systems, as well as control system approaches and strategies. Prior to PNNL, Dr. Brambley was a faculty member at the Washington University Engineering School in St. Louis. He holds a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and master's and doctorate degrees in Engineering Sciences from the University of California, San Diego.

Hong Wang joined PNNL as a Laboratory Fellow and Chief Scientist in Controls in February 2016, and brings extensive experience in control theory and applications. Prior to PNNL, Dr. Wang worked at the University of Manchester, starting in 1992 as a Lecturer and was promoted a Full Chair Professor in April 2002. He served as the Deputy Head of the Paper Science Department and the director of the UMIST Control Systems Centre, and was a university senate member. Dr. Wang's work has focused on stochastic systems control, fault diagnosis and fault tolerant control, and general system modeling, control and optimization, and he has published five books and more than 300 technical papers in leading journals and major control conferences. He is an editorial board member for several leading international journals including IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, and is a member of three IFAC technical Committees. Dr. Wang is a fellow of IEE (now IET) and of the Institute of Measurement and Control. His bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees were earned from two universities—Huainan University of Mining Engineering and Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

Draguna Vrabie, a Scientist in the Advanced Controls Technical Group, joined PNNL in November 2015 from the United Technologies Research Center, where she worked as a scientist for five years. Dr. Vrabie possesses expertise in adaptive and optimal control, multi-agent systems, artificial intelligence and learning systems, and methods for distributed optimization, with strong building and HVAC system control application experience. At PNNL, her focus is on development of advanced control technologies applicable to intelligent and energy efficient buildings, power grid and building-to-grid interaction. She earned her doctorate in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington, and master's and bachelor's degrees in Automatic Control and Computer Engineering from “Gheorghe Asachi" Technical University of Iași, Romania.

Thomas Edgar, a Senior Cyber Security Research Scientist in the Science of Cyber Security Group, joined PNNL in February 2006. During his time at the Laboratory, Mr. Edgar has worked in the fields of secure communications protocols, cryptographic trust management, insider threat, security standards, and scientific approach to security. He serves as the co-principal investigator for the powerNET and cyberNET testbeds. Mr. Edgar's research interests include the scientific underpinnings of cyber security and applying scientific based cyber security solutions to enterprise and critical infrastructure environments. His expertise lies in scientific process, critical infrastructure security, protocol development, cyber forensics, network security, and testbed and experiment construction. His educational background consists of bachelor's and master's degrees in Computer Science from the University of Tulsa with a specialization in Information Assurance.

Mark Rice's research interests are in control center applications, wide area measurements and controls, power system modeling and analysis, and human interaction with applications. He joined PNNL in 2011 and currently is an engineer in the Resilience Technical Group. Prior to PNNL, he was employed by Alstom Grid, developing network applications. Dr. Rice holds a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from Kansas State University, and master's and doctoral degrees in Electrical Engineering from Arizona State University. He served as a research assistant at ASU, focusing on power systems state estimation, and in 2002 he was an intern in the Washington Internships for Students of Engineering program, where he worked on renewable energy policy.

Paul Ehrlich has viewed CCSI from both advisory and participant perspectives. He served as the chair of the CCSI Advisory Committee before joining PNNL as a staff member in 2016. He’s currently co-lead of the initiative’s Test Bed Focus Area and the principal investigator for CCSI’s Campus as a Laboratory project. Mr. Ehrlich holds a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering (University of Wisconsin) and a master’s degree in Business Administration (University of St. Thomas). After 20 years in the building controls and HVAC industries, he formed the Building Intelligence Group LLC, an independent consultancy, to support and promote the delivery of high performance buildings. His research interests include commercial building energy efficiency, building control systems, integrated controls and automation, buildings-to-grid and transactive energy. Mr. Ehrlich has actively participated in industry groups involved with buildings and the electrical grid.

Jason Fuller, an Engineer who also manages PNNL's Integration Technical Group of nearly 20 researchers, started working at the Laboratory through several internship programs and was hired as a staff member in 2009. His research interests include integration of distribution-level technologies and distribution automation and analysis. One of Mr. Fuller's main areas of work at PNNL has been the development of GridLAB-D, a power-flow simulation environment. In the role of CCSI Demonstrations Lead, Mr. Fuller oversees and coordinates development of integrated demonstrations that link multiple CCSI tools to achieve overarching control objectives. Prior to serving as Demonstrations Lead, he managed the initiative's Tools Focus Area. He's a graduate of the University of Washington and Washington State University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in Physics and a Master's in Electric Engineering.

Karan Kalsi, an Engineer in PNNL's Advanced Controls technical group, has been at PNNL since 2010. His research interests include power system stability and control, power system dynamic modeling and analysis, integration and control of distributed energy resources, and power system market optimization problems. Dr. Kalsi serves as the principal investigator for several advanced controls research projects for the Department of Energy and, in the past, led a project in PNNL's groundbreaking Future Power Grid Initiative, which concluded in 2015. He served as CCSI's Deputy Lead during the initiative's first two years and, in his current role, Control Community Outreach, Dr. Kalsi is a liaison between CCSI and the national and international control community, raising the initiative's visibility with these key audiences. He earned his master's degree in Electronic and Electrical Engineering from the University of Sheffield, and doctorate in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Purdue University.