Derek Chang is a doctoral candidate in Computational Science and Engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. His work focuses on building smart electricity grids that are resilient to hurricanes and extreme weather, using statistical and optimization methods. Research towards this goal includes developing models for prediction of hurricane wind fields and two-stage stochastic optimization frameworks for placement of distributed energy resources (DERs) in the electric grid. DERs such as portable microgrids, storage devices, and electric vehicles permit increased flexibility in provision of emergency power during disasters. These models are extended to disaster relief applications by using annotated aerial images of hurricane damage from past storms for situational awareness.
Derek holds two degrees from MIT, a B.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering and M.S. in Atmospheric Science. He is also a Data Science Intern (summer 2019) at Spacemaker AI, where he is exploring how computational modeling can solve a wide array of problems in sustainability of urban systems.