A brief description
My name is Pepe and I moved from Germany to Sweden in 2015 for my PhD and I have been living in Göteborg since then. After finishing my PhD this year in 2020, I am now actively looking for a job that matches my professional interests.
When I am not working on smaller projects using mainly Python and R and other open source programs, I enjoy climbing/bouldering and going out into the nature for hikes and taking photographs. I also picked up rowing during my time at Chalmers and have to say that this is the most physically demanding sport I have ever come across.
Interests
- Thermal Energy Storage & Numerical Modeling in Building Energy Applications and Building Physics
- Mathematical Optimization
- Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Predictive Models
- Exploratory Data Analysis, PCA, Bayesian Statistics
Since my research was on how thermal energy storage applications can make the building energy systems more flexible, my interest in studying mathematical optimization grew quite a lot. This is because when integrating a thermal energy storage into the system one needs to basically solve a sizing and control optimization problem: What is the optimum storage capacity? How large should be the (dis-)charge power be and when should be the storage charged and discharged?
In general, the huge amount of possibilities of applying optimization algorithms is fascinating, which is why I enjoy finding new applications and building optimization models. I also developed an interest in making prediction models using machine learning techniques and to perform statistical data analysis. I think these three fields: Optimization, Machine Learning and Data Science have already become so important in our daily life and will continue to do so. Thus, it is important to be aware of their potential (but also their current limitations) when problem solving. E.g. I think for supervised learning to be most effective requires careful experimental design when collecting the data that the model should learn from.
Since buildings make up a very large portion of our energy consumption, these techniques will become even more important in finding a good balance between comfort and energy efficiency.
Educational Background
- PhD in Thermal Energy Storage with Phase Change Materials (PCMs), Building Physics Modeling Group, Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden), 2015 to 2020. Supervisors: Prof. Angela Sasic Kalagasidis and Prof. Pär Johansson.
- Master in Energy Technologies, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany) & Uppsala University (Sweden), 2012 to 2014.
- Bachelor in Energietechnik (Energy Technology), University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany), 2009 to 2012.
Media Mentions
- 2019: A magazine article about the PCM cold storage from my work (in Swedish) by NyTeknik.
- 2018: I gave an interview about measurement techniques for PCMs for the Phase Change Matters Newsletter.
Publications
I have published in a couple of peer-reviewed journals related to heat transfer, thermal analysis, energy storage and methanol synthesis (e.g. International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, Applied Energy, Journal of Energy Storage, Chemical Engineering & Technology).
See my Google Scholar profile for a complete list.
You can find my PhD thesis (link here) and Licentiate thesis (link here) in the Chalmers Research Repository.
Slides from my PhD defense can be found (here).
Scholarships
- Fellowship & Full Scholarship German Academic Scholarship Foundation, 2011 to 2014.
- Full Scholarship EIT Innoenergy, 2012 to 2014.
About the site title:
A few years ago, I read this quote somewhere on the internet:
Everything has three sides ~
the one I see ~
the one you see ~
and the one nobody of us yet sees.
I couldn’t find the exact source of it again, but the quote has stuck with me ever since. It’s a motivation for staying curious and open-minded of your own (and others’) work, research and beliefs. It’s also a reminder for tolerance and not being too quick to judge without fully understanding someone else’s view.