Yiwen Wang Wins Prestigious Poster Competition
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Ph.D. student Yiwen Wang of the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (MIE) Department was recently recognized as a winner of the 2022 C3E Women in Clean Energy Symposium poster competition for her work investigating technological change in clean energy. Wang is also a UMass ELEVATE (Elevating Equity Values in the Transition of the Energy System) Fellow, participating in this graduate training and research program focused on technical, equity, and climate challenges in the energy transition.
Wang is a member of Distinguished Professor Erin Baker’s E3 Research Lab studying Engineering, Economics, and Environmental Decision Making. Baker is a faculty member in the MIE department and the faculty director of the UMass Energy Transition Institute.
Baker says that “The C3E symposium is an annual event that gathers women professionals in the clean energy field and spotlights their achievements. The symposium attracts over 100 female clean energy leaders from academia, business, and government every year. About 30 students and early-career researchers from prominent institutions across the country are invited to the poster competition.”
In that context, the title of Wang’s winning poster was “Characterizing relatedness between offshore and onshore wind energy using patent analysis.”
As Baker explains, “Wang uses wind energy as a test case to see how relatedness between technologies can inform subsidy policies and accelerate cost reductions of emerging renewable technologies.”
Wang is seeking her Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research. Her research is focused on understanding the operation of the current energy systems and improving socioeconomic models for renewable energy forecasting. She holds a Master of Environmental Management degree from Duke University and a B.S. degree in Environmental Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China.
Prior to starting her Ph.D. education at UMass Amherst, Wang worked as energy consulting intern informing decision-making of utilities and policymakers on state-wide renewable energy planning.
In addition to the poster competition at the 11th annual U.S. C3E symposium, sponsored by the MIT Energy Initiative, key thought leaders explored how we can steadily pursue sustainable energy goals through current and future challenges. (November 2022)