- [Mason] Hello, and thank you for tuning in to Connections and Directions, our University of Michigan Civil and Environmental Engineering podcast. My name is Mason Hinawi, and I am the CEE marketing communications specialist and host of this series. During our podcast, we'll be featuring members of our CEE community and how their work reflects our mission of engineers in service to society. We will be highlighting our strategic directions and our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. CEE's five strategic directions are human habitat experience, shaping resource flows, adaptation, automation, and data-driven innovation. I'm here today with Rabab Haider incoming assistant professor, starting in January of 2025. Welcome, Rabab, to our podcast.

- [Rabab] Thank you so much for having me today.

- [Mason] Our pleasure. Can you share with our listeners some details about your research areas and how they align with our strategic directions and our mission of engineers and service to society?

- [Rabab] Okay, so thank you for the question. I am an energy systems researcher, and I develop engineering solutions to help transition our energy infrastructure to one that's able to provide green, reliable, and affordable energy for all. So, as many of us know, anthropogenic carbon emissions are a fundamental contributor to climate to change, and we are readily using fossil fuels in the past and present to meet our energy needs. And this can be electricity generation, heating, transportation, or industrial applications and manufacturing. So in order to mitigate the effects of this climate change, we really need widespread access to clean energy like solar, wind, and battery storage. My research focuses really on the electricity system, and this is undergoing rapid transformation in order to achieve this decarbonization, and we have to do this very quickly. So for example, in the US, we have a target for carbon free electricity generation by 2035. That's coming in less than a decade. So to meet goal, we really have to have an unprecedented paradigm shift in how we plan the grid, how we operate energy systems, and how we think about how users interact with that system. This is really whereby research comes in in trying to understand how tools like optimization, machine learning, and market design can really be used to operate in a clean energy system. In terms of societal grand challenges, my research faces two of these. This is maintaining secure energy access and doing so on an aging grid infrastructure. And this challenge is coupled really well, in my opinion, with CEE strategic directions. And I'll list three of the ones that I think are the most applicable here. The first is adaptation, and this is adapting both our infrastructure itself as well as the way that we interact with the infrastructure through the energy transition. The second is automation of certain planning and operational tasks so that we can better respond to systems that are changing more quickly. And the third is data-driven innovation. This helps us to improve our models, decision making, and customer engagement mechanisms. The one thing that I really want to highlight and I think is the cornerstone of energy systems, is that energy systems are infrastructure systems with human users at the center. So every time that you turn a light on or plug your phone into charge, adjust your thermostat, or you're driving your car, you're directly interacting with the energy system and that's the system that my research is focusing on. So it's a very unique system in the sense that every single person interacts with energy infrastructure in multiple ways every day, and they don't often think about it or realize that they're doing it. In this way, all of my research is really focused on how we as engineers can be in service to society in order to supply green, reliable, and affordable energy for all people.

- [Mason] Awesome. And how did you become interested in your area of research? And was there a pivotal moment that significantly influenced your professional path in the field of civil and environmental engineering?

- [Rabab] Yeah, so I've always been very mindful of sustainability, you know, sustainability, environment, from a very young age. I remember watching a lot of David Suzuki, which is very Canadian of me, and I watched various documentaries and the Planet Earth series, and as a kid, I was always the one who was kind of running around and turning all the lights off in empty rooms and telling my classmates to recycle, you know, sheets of papers and aluminum cans. So all of this kind of instilled the sense of sustainability and stewardship in me. And then my foray into renewable energy came in elementary school when we had a module on solar and hydro energy. And I think I've been hooked since that point. I've definitely matured. So I used to think that there was, you know, a silver bullet solution to clean energy challenges. But through my undergraduate education, I was really exposed to different ways of thinking and the different challenges that we see that it's not just about the technology, but it's about the entire system and how it integrates and comes together. So I'd always been very interested in problem solving and engineering kind of is a natural fit there, and I was motivated by sustainability and human experience. So as I've grown in this field, there's really no better way for me than bringing all of these together and becoming an energy researcher so that I can focus on both the technologies, but also the society and the people involved.

- [Mason] Absolutely. And how do you plan to incorporate principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion in your teaching, research, and service to ensure an inclusive and supportive environment for all members of the CEE community?

- [Rabab] I think I wanna start by saying that diversity, equity, and inclusion, pardon me, really helps all of us. So in engineering research, there's almost never a singular solution. There's often never one right answer. And instead, what we need to do is we really need to leverage the diversity of thought to come up with sets of really good answers to some of the most pressing societal challenges that we've ever faced. And climate change is just one of those challenges. The only thing that we can do is to foster a diverse and inclusive environment, and we have to do this by providing space for all of the voices in our community to be heard. So in the classroom, for example, I practice inclusive teaching, I try to focus on real-world impact, and I try to emphasize the intersection of systems so that we can have more of a holistic view of things. One framework that I really enjoy is the Universal Design for Learning principles, or UDL, and two of the pillars in UDL is providing multiple means of representation, for example, of the information that we're sharing. So a podcast that's recorded versus a transcript that's also provided multiple needs of information. And another could be providing multiple means of engagement with the material. And so in this space, I plan to use gamification in education to provide alternative ways for students to interact with challenging concepts and to provide tangible ways of synthesizing challenging concepts. One way, for example, in the power system, we can't have students actually go out and interact with the grid in an operational framework because of safety and reliability issues. But if we have a game or a, you know, like a demo software that they can interact in that space, they start getting a tangible sense of some of the challenges in this system without having to address the barriers of actually being able to interact with that real system. And then within research, I'm really interested in having some of my projects focused on energy justice and specifically thinking about access and affordability of clean energy for vulnerable communities. I'm currently working to explore how we can operationalize energy justice metrics for decision making in both grid planning and operations and I'm collaborating with some researchers at Georgia Tech in this project, as well. And so one of the things I'm mindful of is, as researchers, we really want to engage with different communities so we can understand their lived experience and the impact of the work that we're doing. And at the same time, we want to reflect this diversity in our research teams. So an example of this is someone who grew up in, say, Arizona, wouldn't know the challenges of Michigan winters without having lived it first, but they would know the challenge of living in dry and desert climates. And so depending on, you know, the group of people that we're working with and the challenges that we are trying to address, we need to see how the lived experience of each person can contribute to our understanding of the real world challenges that we have. And I think this really strengthens our ability to be engineers in service to society.

- [Mason] That sounds super promising. How do you intend to involve students in your research, and what opportunities do you foresee for mentoring and developing the next generation of CEE professionals? And what courses do you aspire to teach here at CEE?

- [Rabab] Yeah, so I am looking forward to working closely with students at all stages of their education. So within U of M, both undergraduate and graduate researchers, I really believe that the sooner the students are exposed to different ideas and techniques and the different branches of civil and environmental engineering, the better informed they will be of their interests, their strengths, and the ways that they can contribute to the field. There's really a huge amount of diversity in the kind of work that we do, the techniques that we use and the way that I guess we even formulate questions and hypotheses. In addition to working with me, I really encourage students to engage in deep collaborations with their colleagues with one another, with other faculty or industry partners. And I do try to have, you know, an open door policy or, I guess, it could be like an open Zoom policy, if we think about, you know, virtual engagements. I really enjoy connecting with, you know, really anybody, anywhere that I can be helpful. So if it's students, or researchers, or industry professionals, they wanna chat about, you know, our research project or higher ed or navigating the job market, I really understand the importance of mentorship and I'm always looking for opportunities to pay it forward. And so I actually recently taught a leadership course for Women in Energy that I had previously taken as a student, and it was really a great way to be on the other side of that. So having learned the material then to be teaching it myself and engaging with all of these women and these female researchers in what are typically male dominated fields, it was a very rewarding experience. I have a couple of ideas that I'm really excited about in terms of engaging with the community and interacting with kids to promote interest in STEM and systems engineering. And I'm hoping to plug in with some of the existing initiatives that U of M already has to try and, you know, use that as a platform to engage further. In terms of specific courses, I'm really looking forward to being part of the intelligence systems group within the department and teaching the systems oriented courses. So some of these could be things like optimization, data driven decision making, and machine learning, really thinking about energy infrastructure and systems. And then one course I'm hoping to build in, or at least sections of the course would be the intersection of equity and justice and outreach within engineering frameworks.

- [Mason] So far in your career, what accomplishments are you most proud of and how do these successes shape your goals as a new faculty member here at UMCE?

- [Rabab] So this is a really hard question for me. It's almost like asking somebody to pick their favorite child. So if you'll let me, I'm going to cheat just a little and I'll pick two things, but they kind of come together to what my goal is as a new faculty member entering U of M CEE. So the first is that during my PhD I was named an MIT Energy Fellow, and this gave me the opportunity to connect with energy researchers in various fields and with various educational backgrounds. And this has really been helpful in understanding, you know, systems of systems and how the questions that we ask really manifest in different ways depending on who the stakeholder is and how they are interacting with the system. The second thing that I'm going to say is that I've had the great pleasure of working with some really excellent undergraduate and graduate students, and they've helped me to grow as an advisor and a mentor. And so the best part of my day is often my interactions with these students. And so all of these, you know, the light bulb aha moments, they make the research really exciting. In addition to just the research, to be on the academic and research journey with these students, to be able to teach them valuable technical skills, but also to be able to teach them resilience and perseverance through the challenges is very important to me. We don't often talk about it, but research is really full of failure because you have to try new things that others perhaps have not tried before. And so it takes some practice to view each failure as a learning opportunity. So with both of these successes that I've mentioned, as I think about the goals that I have coming in as any faculty member, as I build my research program and courses, I'm focusing on instilling three main values in, you know, everything that I do. The first is fostering a collaborative environment. I really like the idea of trying to leverage system minded approaches to asking questions, working together, and searching for creative solutions, as well as engaging with stakeholders to try and find the best portfolio of decisions or solutions. The second is maintaining a learning perspective, both for myself, because regardless of, you know, where I am in my career, there's still a lot more for me to learn and for me to grow in and mentoring students to also be lifelong learners. The third is committing to the growth of every student and peer that I engage with and encouraging others to pay this forward as well. And this is something that really resonates with me and it kind of ties back to that earlier question that you asked about the mentorship and how that is going to take apart in each of the work that I do while I'm here at the department.

- [Mason] Terrific. Well, thank you so much for speaking with me today. We're excited to have you join the department January of 2025. Thank you so much for your time today.

- [Rabab] Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.

- Thank you for listening to our podcast conversation. For more information about CEE at Michigan, please visit our website at cee.umich.edu. You can also reach our YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn pages from our website.