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Scholar

Bikrant Poudel received his B.S. (2013) in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal and M.S. (2017) in Electrical Engineering from the University of New Orleans, New Orleans, USA. He is currently working on his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at the University of New Orleans. His research interest includes airgap field modulation theory, dual-speed synchronous motors, axial flux motors, motor design and optimization, motor drives, and grid-connected PV.

  • Graduate Research Assistant:
    • Research Project for Entergy Inc.
    • Grid-connected photovoltaic system study (May 2019 – Date).
    • Aggregate motor modeling for real-time simulation of the power system (May 2018- February 2019).
    • Louisiana Board of Regents for Workforce and Innovation for a Stronger Economy (WISE) grant
      research in Photovoltaic Emulator Design (April – June 2016).
  • Graduate Teaching Assistant:
    • Energy Conversion Lab, Electronics Lab, Basic Electrical Engineering
      Lab, Power Electronics, Electric machinery.
  • IT Officer, District Development Committee Kathmandu, Government of Nepal, July 2014 – July 2015
  • Embedded system design, Robotics Trainer, Sagarmatha Engineering College Kathmandu, Nepal, July 2014 – June 2015
  • Embedded system design, Robotics Trainer, Meridian International School Kathmandu, Nepal,  December 2013 – July 2014
Rastin Rastgoufard

Rastin Rastgoufard, Ph.D.

  • Unocity
  • UNO-Entergy Power & Energy Research Laboratory (PERL)

Rastin Rastgoufard, Ph.D. created and operates the company Unocity to provide Machine (and Human!) Learning, Data Analytics, and Automation Consulting based on his doctoral research. He completed his Ph.D. in 2018 from the University of New Orleans after receiving his Master’s degree from the same university in 2012. He was in Tulane University’s last Electrical Engineering graduating class in 2008 where he received his Bachelor of Science.

Rastin has many research publications in machine learning as well as power systems. He has presented his works multiple times internationally.

From 2013 to 2018, he was the Technical Lead of UNO’s Power and Energy Research Lab (PERL), and from 2018 onwards he serves as an advisor to PERL.  While there, he led research efforts in several projects funded by Entergy spanning expertise areas including real-time, high-performance computing, hardware-in-the-loop testing, steady state and dynamics automation, design automation, and hurricane modeling.  He trained several Master’s students during this period.

In addition to researching, running Unocity, and advising PERL, Rastin is and has been on the Organizing Committee of the UNO Engineering Forum (UNOEF) since 2014 where he writes software to automate many of the technical issues pertaining to the operation of the Forum, including website management, registration handling, and audio/visual configuration.  He provides artistic direction and is responsible for the feel and flow of the Forum.

  • Rastin Rastgoufard. Multi-Label Latent Spaces with Semi-Supervised Deep Generative Models. Ph.D. dissertation, University of New Orleans, 2018.

  • Rastin Rastgoufard and AbdulRahman Alsamman. Open-book testing and multi-label deep generative models. In Information Fusion (FUSION), 2018 21st International Conference on. ISIF, 2018.

  • Rastin Rastgoufard and AbdulRahman Alsamman. A priori independence for deep generative models. In Information Fusion (FUSION), 2018 21st International Conference on. ISIF, 2018.

  • Parviz Rastgoufard, Ittiphong Leevongwat, and Rastin Rastgoufard. Electric grid hardening and resiliency: Part II, real-time modelling and simulation. The IET’s Engineering & Technology Reference, December 2016.

  • Monir Hossain, Rastin Rastgoufard, and Parviz Rastgoufard. Emission trading mechanism for environmental economic generation dispatch. In 2016 IEEE Green Energy and Systems Conference (IGSEC), pages 1–5, Nov 2016.

  • Sowmya Munukuntla, Rastin Rastgoufard, and Parviz Rastgoufard. Sensitivity analysis of synchronous generators for real-time simulations. In 2016 IEEE Green Energy and Systems Conference (IGSEC), pages 1–6, Nov 2016.

  • Parviz Rastgoufard, Ittiphong Leevongwat, and Rastin Rastgoufard. Electric grid hardening and resiliency: Part I, resiliency and safety. The IET’s Engineering & Technology Reference, January 2016.

  • Rastin Rastgoufard and AbdulRahman Alsamman. GPLVM and lava floor distance for label-deficient semi-supervised learning: Case study. In Information Fusion (FUSION), 2016 19th International Conference on, pages 84–90. ISIF, 2016.

  • Rastin Rastgoufard and AbdulRahman Alsamman. Hybrid autoencoder and classifier for label-deficient semi-supervised learning: Case study. In Information Fusion (FUSION), 2016 19th International Conference on, pages 79–83. ISIF, 2016.

    [10] Jahnavi Lakkireddy, Rastin Rastgoufard, Ittiphong Leevongwat, and Parviz Rastgoufard. Steady state voltage stability enhancement using shunt and series facts devices. In Power Systems Conference (PSC), 2015 Clemson University, pages 1–5. IEEE, 2015.

  • Rastin Rastgoufard, Ittiphong Leevongwat, and Parviz Rastgoufard. Automatic determination of fault current breakpoint locations for personnel protective grounding of distribution and transmission lines. In Power Systems Conference (PSC), 2015 Clemson University, pages 1–5. IEEE,

    2015.

  • Rastin Rastgoufard, Ittiphong Leevongwat, and Parviz Rastgoufard. Impact of hurricanes on gulf coast electric grid islanding of industrial plants. In Power Systems Conference (PSC), 2015 Clemson University, pages 1–5. IEEE, 2015.

  • Rastin Rastgoufard, Vesselin P Jilkov, and X Rong Li. Incorporating world information into the imm algorithm via state-dependent value assignment. In Information Fusion (FUSION), 2014 17th International Conference on, pages 1–8. IEEE, 2014.

  • Rastin Rastgoufard. The interacting multiple models algorithm with state-dependent value assignment. Master’s thesis, University of New Orleans, 2012.