Valentin is a master’s student in Mechanical Engineering at ETH Zurich and a visiting researcher in Dan Kammen’s Renewable and Appropriate
Energy Laboratory. He brings a humanitarian operations and supply chain perspective, improving deployment and maintenance strategies for
power systems and biomedical equipment at health facilities in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Spotlight Kampala is a multi-institutional research collaboration of universities and community advocates that aims to shed light on the inequities faced by informal urban communities in accessing and utilizing electricity. Our data provides important baseline statistics on metrics of access like access rates, affordability, supply reliability and quality as well as an understanding of how community members perceive and navigate barriers to access. We aim not only to provide summary statistics, but to ground these learnings in the daily lived experience of Kampala’s informal residents. Community participation is a core objective of the work, with community members involved in each step of research design, execution, and dissemination. The project also focuses heavily on working closely with local stakeholders like the Government of Uganda’s Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development, the utility Umeme Limited, and community-based organization like ACTogether Uganda and the National Slum Dwellers Federation of Uganda.
For more information and contact with the project team, visit the Spotlight Kampala website.
Xi Xi is a Master’s student for the Energy Resource group. Xi Xi uses interdisciplinary methods such as quantitative modeling techniques and policy analyses to assess impacts on emissions, energy use, and other socio-economic indicators. Xi Xi looks forward to applying her knowledge in the context of international development. Xi Xi would also like to study how developing countries may be affected by or benefit from tensions between China and the West related to China’s emerging role in international development and international climate politics.
In RAEl she is researching US-China climate policy, decarbonization in Africa, and China’s role in Africa, among other topics.
Prior to joining ERG, Xi Xi earned a BA from Wellesley College. Xi Xi has worked for the Institute for Global Decarbonization Progress (iGDP), Abt, and the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC).
Xi Xi also enjoys traveling in their free time.
Anyuat John Arou, is a lecturer of Electrical Engineering at the University of Juba in Juba, South Sudan. He is also the CEO of the Renewable Energy Council of South Sudan (RECOSS).
His Research focuses on Power Systems Studies; especially power quality Control in variable renewable resources (VRE) – Based Microgrids. Arou graduated from Ndejje University, Kampala, Uganda, and received the Master of Science in Electrical Power from Newcastle University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK and currently pursuing Doctor of Engineering in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the Yokohama National University, Yokohama, Japan.
Contact: anyuat2000@gmail.com
Jess Kersey is a fourth-year PhD student broadly interested in technology, regulation, and policy to improve energy access and climate adaptation efforts across multiple geographies including East Africa, Latin America, and island nations. Jess is also a research affiliate of the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and consults with ESMAP, the Asian Development Bank, and the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet.
Her current work focuses on deconstructing urban/binary spatial categorizations and highlighting how examining energy poverty with greater spatial nuance reveals access barriers for the growing populations in informal and/or peri-urban communities. She leads the Spotlight Kampala project, which is a multi-stakeholder research partnership to understand energy access affordability, safety, formality, reliability, and quality in informal settlements.
Jess holds dual bachelor’s degrees in chemical engineering and political science from Virginia Tech. She previously worked as an energy engineer with AECOM’s Energy business line providing technical, project management, and business development support for renewable energy, energy efficiency, and sustainability projects. She has a diverse engineering background which includes experience in energy, construction management, and disaster relief both domestically and internationally including work in Haiti, Panama, El Salvador, the US Virgin Islands, and Iraq.
In her doctoral studies in Germany, Martha is working on the realization of a socially just and accepted energy transition. For this, she plans to add social and ecological aspects to the current technical and economical focus within energy transition planning processes. The development of an integrated energy system model will assess the impact of energy market reforms on community and household level as well as their implications for distributive justice. Her interests, broadly, encompass, energy justice, the energy transition, energy modeling, and Open Source methods and strategies.
Her work is supervised by Prof. Dr. Pao-Yu Oei from the Department of Energy and Environmental Management at Europa-Universität Flensburg (EUF).
Martha wrote her masters degree thesis at the TU Berlin in the research group Off-Grid Systems at the Reiner Lemoine Institut and developed the simulation tool Offgridders, which sizes electrification options. Following this, from 2019 to 2021, she worked as a researcher at the Reiner Lemoine Institut and was responsible for the project management within the scope of the H2020 research project E‑LAND, in which RLI develops and applies a simulation tool for sector coupled energy systems (Multi-Vector Simulator).
Martha’s fellowship is financed through the C‑BEAR+ project (link: https://reiner-lemoine-
She will be a visiting scholar at RAEL for Spring 2023
Contact: martha.hoffmann@rl-stiftung.de
Joyceline is a Tanzanian who holds a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Rochester.
Her research interest lies in energy decentralization, diversification, economics and policy making to empower women and improve the standard of living in East Africa.
She currently works at the Renewable & Appropriate Energy Laboratory on Off grid systems in remote areas in East Africa.
Prior to her MS, Joyceline interned at MIT and conducted research on aluminum batteries for electric vehicles. Additionally, since 2017 she has been working to empower marginalized young women of New Hope For Girls Organization in Tanzania. Among her recent projects is her team winning a $10,000 Davis Project for Peace Fellowship to establish a greenhouse farming business to act as a sustainable income generator for the girls.
Sam Miles is a Ph.D. student in the Energy and Resources Group, and in the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Lab at the University of California, Berkeley.
His research focus is at the intersection of the scalability challenge for electricity mini-grids and the socio-economic characteristics of urbanization in Africa, particularly for the artisans and entrepreneurs who constitute the ‘productive’ users of such energy systems. He will engage with these questions as an INFEWS (Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water Systems) NSF scholar.
Previous to life at ERG, Sam worked as a freelance writer covering technology in emerging markets, an educator at the African Leadership University in Mauritius, and as an international development consultant based in West Africa. He holds an MA in International Energy from Sciences Po — Paris and a BA in Ethics, Politics, and Economics from Yale.
At ERG Annelise has continued the study of community energy solutions, with both cooking and community extension services focal areas for her analytic and field studies.
Annelise Gill-Wiehl studied environmental engineering and international development studies at the University of Notre Dame. There, she worked with the Keough School of Global Affairs’ Associate Dean for Policy and Practice, Sara Sievers, through the Kellogg International Scholars Program. They investigated how to incorporate the preferential option for the poor into policy. Gill-Wiehl’s own research investigates energy infrastructure and the barriers to technology adoption. Gill-Wiehl and Professor Sievers piloted a Community Technology Program in Shirati, Tanzania through a Kellogg Research Grant.
While an undergraduate she interned for the Foundation of Sustainable Development in Masaka, Uganda. Additionally, Gill-Wiehl conducted roughly 200 household energy surveys through an Experiencing the World Fellowship to investigate energy infrastructure in Shirati. Her research interests are at the intersection of engineering and policy in the East African context. She hopes to pursue a PhD to further investigate these issues.
Thesis Title: Pilot of Community Technology Workers in Shirati, Tanzania
My interests range from the integration of renewables into existing grids,the possibility of indigenes (especially women) in rural communities producing their own power or at least understanding its workings and the interaction between science and policy making in developing countries. I would love to study in the Renewable & Appropriate Energy Laboratory (RAEL) or the Energy Modeling, Analysis and Control Group (EMAC)
You must be logged in to post a comment.