Expertise
Areas of Specialization
Research Clusters
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Assistant Professor
Chemical Engineering
Overview
The global energy system is going through massive changes for many reasons including ever-increasing energy demand, climate change mitigation, and large-scale electrification. These changes have widespread implications in how we think of energy production and distribution, as well as on process operation, economics, and sustainability. In addition, due to increasing pressure to reduce costs in the process industries to remain competitive, decision-making levels that were previously considered separate, including process design, planning, scheduling, and real-time control are becoming ever-more tightly integrated. While this has significant potential to improve operations and reduce costs it brings about many challenges in modeling, process design and operation, and computational complexities. Our research addresses these challenges through the following research areas:
Integrated Energy Systems: design, simulation, and optimal operation (both economic and sustainable) of systems with multiple energy pathways/components including energy storage methods, biofuels, etc.
Integrated Decision Making: The process industries can reduce costs by integrating information and decision-making activities across functions and decision-making levels. Our interests lie in coupled decision-making including topics such as demand side management, condition-based maintenance, integrated production and maintenance scheduling, and closed-loop planning and scheduling.
Power Systems Engineering: Design, simulation, and optimal operation of power systems and how they interact with the process industries including demand response, economic dispatch and redispatch, and power system planning.
Data-Driven Decision Making: The internet of things has enabled large-scale data collection from industrial processes and power systems. Our work focuses on utilizing data to make informed decisions in areas including condition-based maintenance, and alarm management.
For more information, and for open graduate student positions, please see our lab website. (dalleavelab.com).
I started my university career at McMaster where I completed my bachelor’s degree in engineering, specializing in process systems engineering, with a minor in computer science. My research career also started at McMaster with a master’s degree in chemical engineering, funded by an Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS) under the supervision of Dr. Tom Adams. Following that I moved to Germany where I received a Marie Curie Doctorate Fellowship as part of an Industrial Doctorate Program (part of the PRONTO project). During my PhD I worked at ABB Corporate Research in Germany and at the same time pursued my studies at the Technical University of Dortmund under the joint supervision of Dr. Iiro Harjunkoski and Prof. Sebastian Engell. During my time at ABB, I had exposure to many industries including mining, steelmaking, chemical, and oil and gas. I then moved to Hitachi Energy Research where I worked as a scientist in the domain of power systems engineering for several years before returning to McMaster as a faculty member in January 2024.
Outside of work I spend my time playing sports (biking is my favourite), cooking, playing video games, or practicing piano and violin.
- Ph.D. Chemical Engineering, Technical University of Dortmund (2022)
- M.A.Sc. Chemical Engineering, McMaster University (2016)
- B.Eng. Chemical Engineering, McMaster University (2014)
For a full list of publications, please see Google Scholar or our lab website.