Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
By far the largest university in Belgium in terms of research funding and expenditure, which conducts fundamental and applied research in all academic disciplines with a clear international orientation. A leading university in the field of Science & Technology, including a Research Centre Sustainable Earth and an Energy-Institute. Acting as WP Leader of WP3 “Development of an MPC Toolchain for the hybrid MPC-GEOTABS concepts”
KU Leuven will contribute to WP2 “Development of a dedicated hybrid MPC-GEOTABS design strategy” (for the control integrated design and emulator models), WP4 “Concept & Impact Validation” (in both the real-life and virtual test beds), thereby feeding WP5 “People planet profit validation” and WP6 “Exploration & Exploitation”. Lieve Helsen will be responsible to survey gender balance throughout the project duration.
PROF. DR. IR. LIEVE HELSEN
Currently Full Professor in Mechanical Engineering – leading the Thermal Systems Simulation (The SySi) research group (www.mech.kuleuven.be/en/tme/research/thermal_systems) Lieve's expertise is mainly situated in the field of optimal design, dynamic system behaviour, global system integration, and (optimal) control of thermal systems (both experimentally and theoretically). Present interests focus on the role of heat/cold-storage systems, integration of renewable and residual energy sources (R2ES), the dynamic global system behaviour, optimal control through model predictive control (MPC), control integrated design of a large variety of thermal systems (including thermal networks) and active demand response. Besides lab-scale experiments monitoring campaigns are set up in demonstration buildings as a proof of concept. Lieve Helsen coordinated the EU-EraSME-GEOTABS project (2011-2013), is Academic Responsible for the Thermal Systems field within EnergyVille (www.energyville.be). Partner in four running EU-H2020 projects, Work Package Leader in the IBPSA Project 1 (focusing on MPC) and member of the management committee of the KU Leuven Energy Institute. Together with Prof. Wim Boydens she will be chairing the BS2021 Conference in Bruges.
DR. FILIP JORISSEN
Filip Jorissen is a post-doctoral researcher at the mechanical department of KU Leuven. His research focusses on the development and testing of tools for the scalable implementation of model predictive control. Filip is a developer of the IDEAS and IBPSA Modelica libraries, which aim to bring the next-generation simulation language Modelica to building applications.
DR. IR. DAMIEN PICARD
Damien Picard is currently a post-doctoral researcher at KU Leuven, Belgium. He studied Mechanical Engineering in Thermo-technical Sciences at KU Leuven and at TU Graz (Austria) and graduated in 2012. His dissertation handles modeling, optimal control and design of large buildings using ground source heat pump systems. Damien is a developer of the Modelica IDEAS and the Annex 60 libraries which aim to bring the next-generation simulation language Modelica to building applications. Damien works currently half time for hybridGEOTABS at KU Leuven to further develop and implement MPC in real buildings, and half time at Boydens Engineering as a HVAC Design Engineer.
IR. IAGO CUPEIRO FIGUEROA
Iago has been in contact with the HVAC sector since he was a little boy, as his father is a self-employed plumbing and heating installer, in the Galician city of Lugo. In addition to his technical insight, Iago has studied Industrial Engineering with expertise in Mechanical Engineering at Universidade de Vigo, developing his Master Thesis at Cork Institute of Technology in Ireland. He did a small internship in the Lugo’s society of plumbing and heating, but he came back to Vigo to course a master in Renewable Energy and Sustainability, and became a member of the Solar Engineering and Refrigeration research group at the same time, focusing his research in geothermal heat pumps. He is currently doing his PhD at KU Leuven within the hybridGEOTABS project.