Six researchers from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Energy Science and Technology Directorate have been elevated to Senior Member status by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The honorees are Ahmet Aktas, Md Shamin Hasan, Wan Li, Amy Moore, Adam Siekmann, and Cliff White.
IEEE Senior Member is the organization’s highest professional grade for which members can apply. The distinction is awarded by peers in recognition of significant technical achievements and professional contributions and is held by only about 10 percent of IEEE’s more than 450,000 members worldwide.
Ahmet Aktas
In the Vehicle Power Electronics Research Group, Aktas’ research focuses on advanced power electronics for electric and hybrid motors and high-power conversion systems, including multilevel inverters, converter control, and smart grid integration. His work spans wireless power transfer, energy management systems, battery and ultracapacitor modeling, and microcontroller-based implementations, with applications ranging from vehicle power electronics to grid-connected power conversion. Aktas is the author of the book Solar Hybrid Systems: Design and Application, holds a patent, and has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals. His experience also includes hardware design for defense and other specialized energy programs, as well as project leadership in hybrid energy generation and hybrid energy storage systems projects.
Md Shamin Hasan
Hasan, a postdoctoral researcher in the Power Systems Resilience Group, specializes in power system electromagnetic transient simulation, optimization, stability and control in power systems. Before joining the ORNL staff this year, he worked in engineering planning and design and other engineering roles for a public utility in Bangladesh before earning a doctorate in electrical engineering from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Hasan won the IEEE Ralph Lee Prize Paper Award from IEEE Industry Applications Society in 2024.
Wan Li
As a research and development staff member in the Applied Research for Mobility Systems Group, Li focuses on traffic system modeling and simulation, urban transportation network operation and control, and data-driven spatiotemporal forecasting. Her research integrates data-driven methods, optimization algorithms, and big data analytics to support intelligent transportation systems and advance smart city development. Li serves as a handling editor for Transportation Research Record, the journal of the Transportation Research Board (TRB), and is a committee member of the TRB Maintenance Fleet and Equipment Committee. In addition, she serves on the American Society of Civil Engineers Transportation and Development Institute’s Data Sensing and Analytics Committee and Artificial Intelligence in Transportation Committee.
Amy Moore
Moore, a transportation systems engineer in the Transportation Analytics and Decision Science Group, focuses on transportation and infrastructure planning using geographic information systems, with an emphasis on freight safety and optimization. Her research explores the application of advanced technologies, alternative powertrains, and alternative fuels to improve freight system performance and decision-making. Moore has worked extensively with Geographic Information Systems in transportation-focused applications since 2009 and brings systems-level analysis to transportation planning and analytics.
Adam Siekmann
Siekmann’s research in the Applied Research for Mobility Systems Group focuses on improving the safety and efficiency of commercial heavy vehicles through advanced electronic systems, modeling, and analysis. His expertise includes heavy commercial vehicle safety systems, electronic vehicle screening technologies, and roadside inspection procedures, with particular emphasis on tire and brake system performance and vehicle systems integration. Siekmann is the principal investigator for the Commercial Motor Vehicle Roadside Technology Corridor project sponsored by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
Cliff White
White is a researcher in the Electric Drives Research Group and has been with ORNL for 45 years. He began his career at the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant in 1980. Over the years, his work has focused on the design, construction, and testing of prototype electronic circuitry for data acquisition and control systems, including amplifier circuitry, microcontroller- and digital signal processing–based systems. White has contributed to the development of inverter systems for permanent magnet motor control and wireless power transfer technologies, including ORNL’s world-record-setting wireless power transfer system for electric motor charging. He is a co-inventor on 10 U.S. patents. White and team won the Second Place Prize Paper Award from IEEE Transactions on Transportation Electrification in 2022.
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science. — Julya Johnson
