Skip to main content Skip to main navigation Skip to page-level navigation Go to the Disability Resource Centre Website Go to the DRC Booking Accommodation Portal Go to the Inclusive Technology Lab Website
The University of British Columbia
UBC - A Place of Mind
The University of British Columbia Okanagan campus
UBC Okanagan News
  • Research
  • People
    • Student Profile
    • Faculty Profile
    • Alumni Spotlight
  • Campus Life
    • Campus News
    • Student Life
    • Teaching & Learning
  • Community Engagement
  • About the Collection
    • Stories for Media
  • UBCO Events
  • Search All Stories
Home / 2014 / July / 14 / Creating sustainability and solving energy problems with optimization
Teaching & Learning

Creating sustainability and solving energy problems with optimization

July 14, 2014

Applied mathematician Claudia Sagastizábal gives public talk at UBC

Claudia Sagastizábal

Claudia Sagastizábal gives a free public talk on managing power-plant electricity generation on Wednesday, July 23, 2 to 3 p.m. in the Sciences Building, Room SCI 396.

What: Public lecture: Optimization put to good use in energy problems
Who: Claudia Sagastizábal
When: Wednesday, July 23, 2 to 3 p.m.
Where: SCI 396, Sciences Building, UBC’s Okanagan campus, Kelowna

Applied mathematician Claudia Sagastizábal, a leading international specialist in the area of optimization, arrives from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for three weeks at UBC’s Okanagan campus to collaborate and network with UBC researchers in mathematics and engineering. She will also give a public talk — Optimization put to good use in energy problems — focused on energy sustainability.

In her lecture, Sagastizábal will examine problems in managing a mix of power plants generating electricity, using optimization modeling. The free public talk takes place Wednesday, July 23, 2 to 3 p.m. in the Sciences Building, Room SCI 396, UBC’s Okanagan campus, Kelowna. Light snacks and refreshments will be provided. Pay parking is available.

“An optimizer has the ability to build a model that guides the plant manager in planning how much electricity to produce from each source of energy: hydraulic, nuclear, coal, wind, solar,” says Sagastizábal. The modeling includes definition of goals, such as minimizing carbon footprints, maximizing revenue, or reducing risk of blackouts.

“However, the manager’s choices are limited by the production capacity, physical laws for each technology, and prediction of public consumption,” says Sagastizábal.

Sagastizábal will discuss how to model such issues and exploit structural properties of nonsmooth objective functions. She has participated in academic and industrial collaborations since her PhD studies, with research interests in the areas of nonsmooth optimization, stochastic programming, and variational analysis, and are driven by real-life applications.

Sagastizábal’s visit to UBC is supported by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor’s International Distinguished Visitors program.

Sagastizábal holds or has held consulting research and development appointments for companies such as Électricité de France, Gaz de France-Suez and Renault in France; Robert Bosch in Germany; and Petrobras, Bovespa and Eletrobras in Brazil.

After concluding her undergrad studies in Argentina, Sagastizábal obtained her PhD and habilitation degrees at Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne University.  She is currently a visiting researcher at the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IMPA) in Rio de Janeiro, and has held permanent positions at the French Institute for Automatic Control and Computer Science (INRIA), and at the Brazilian Electric Energy Research Center (CEPEL-Eletrobras). Sagastizábal is co-author of the book Numerical Optimization: Theoretical and Practical Aspects.

–30–

Media Contact

Patty Wellborn
Media Relations Strategist
University Relations

The University of British Columbia
Okanagan campus
Tel: 250 317 0293
E-mail: patty.wellborn@ubc.ca

Content type: Media Advisory
More content from: Irving K Barber School of Arts and Sciences (prior July 2020)

Trending Stories

  • UBC Okanagan student residence receives Passive House certification
  • Every dog can have its day, even online
  • Old DNA provides new insights for national park’s salmon ...
  • Research with Altitude
  • New research suggests ways to get men to open ...
All Stories
Contact Media Relations

About UBC Okanagan

UBC’s Okanagan campus is an innovative hub for research and learning founded in partnership with local Indigenous peoples, the Syilx Okanagan Nation, in whose traditional, ancestral and unceded territory the campus resides. The most established and influential global rankings all consistently place UBC in the top five per cent of universities in the world, and among the top three Canadian universities.

The Okanagan campus combines a globally recognized UBC education with a tight-knit and entrepreneurial community that welcomes students and faculty from around the world in British Columbia’s stunning Okanagan Valley. For more visit ok.ubc.ca.

Discover more about UBC Okanagan

Find a Program Admissions Book a Tour UBCO Facts
UBC Okanagan Campus News, University Relations

Innovation Precinct Annexation 1 (IA1)
3505 Spectrum Court
Kelowna, BC Canada V1V 2Z1

We respectfully acknowledge the Syilx Okanagan Nation and their peoples, in whose traditional, ancestral, unceded territory UBC Okanagan is situated.

 

Search all stories

Subscribe to receive news by email

Visit UBC's Vancouver news room

Global and Admin Messages

News

Okanagan Campus

UBC Okanagan News
Okanagan Campus
3333 University Way
Kelowna, BC Canada V1V 1V7
Find us on
  
Back to top
The University of British Columbia
  • Emergency Procedures |
  • Terms of Use |
  • Copyright |
  • Accessibility