Workshop: Towards Carbon-neutral Electricity and Mobility: The Infrastructure Challenges and Opportunities; Houston, Texas; 28 February - 1 March 2022

This award will support a workshop that brings together a group of leading experts with complementary backgrounds (in the area of power and energy, transportation, artificial intelligence/machine learning etc.) to build bridges between various research areas and thereby shape the research paradigm for a carbon-neutral transition in the electricity and mobility sectors. Specifically, this workshop aims to bridge the gap by identifying a research agenda for the common underlying cyber infrastructure needs to support the ambitious carbon-neutral transition.

Many of the key research questions, such as how to plan for electric vehicle charging infrastructure along the highways and electric transmission grids, would tremendously benefit from shared data/models across power and transportation networks. The discussions and convergent research ideas engendered by this workshop will have significant impacts on the research and education of data-driven engineering systems towards sustainability.

The project is jointly funded by the Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI) Division and the Office of the Assistant Director (OAD) in the Directorate for Engineering.

The workshop will address key questions in cyber infrastructure needs to facilitate the carbon-neutral transition of electricity and transportation sectors. Topics of interest include (1) joint modeling of power and transportation systems coupled by electric vehicles; (2) data sets and algorithms for artificial intelligence/machine learning-based approaches to accelerate the carbon-neutral transition in electricity and mobility; (3) modeling and data sets for equity and justice research during the carbon-neutral transition; and (4) experience and insights from building cross-domain cyber infrastructure in synergistic NSF activities.

These topics will address two of NSF's 10 big ideas: "Harnessing the Data Revolution" and "Growing Convergence Research". The workshop will also generate opportunities for collaborative research between academia and industry through discussing potential ideas for technology transfer and entrepreneurship.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.