George Bollas

Director - UTC Institute for Advanced Systems Engineering, Associate Professor

Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

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Dr. George Bollas is the Director of the United Technologies Corporation Institute for Advanced Systems Engineering (UTC-IASE) at the University of Connecticut. He is an Associate Professor with the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Connecticut, a process design expert and winner of the prestigious NSF CAREER Award and the ACS PRF DNI Award. He received B.E. and Ph.D. degrees from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and then worked as a postdoctoral research associate at the Chemical Engineering Department of MIT. At UConn, he is leading efforts to develop and explore novel system representations (steady state and dynamic models) of thermal fluid systems (TFS) in equation-oriented environments that allow system dynamic optimization, sensitivity and uncertainty analysis, fault detection and optimal control. Dr. Bollas is also the director of the Process Design Simulation and Optimization Laboratory (PDSOL). The lab pursues a balanced approach to experimentation guided by robust modeling and simulation of chemical processes, including experimental design, process scaling and control.

Systems Engineering Focus

Key Active Research Projects

• Built-In Test (BIT) design for robust active Fault Detection and Isolation (FDI)
• Plant-level dynamic optimization and supervisory control using reduced-order models
• Dynamic simulation and real-time optimization and supervisory control of power plant operations
• Optimal design of experiments for scale-up uncertainty reduction

Future Directions

• False alarms and No-Fault Found (NFF) elimination in highly uncertain environments
• Supervisory control and real time optimization of modern power plants with CO₂ capture
• Deterministic model reduction
• Design of experiments for scale-up uncertainty reduction

Key Skills/Capabilities

• Research Specialties: Systems with Uncertainty, Fault Detection/ Isolation/ Accommodation, Surrogate & Reduced Order Modeling, Optimal Scale-up of Uncertain Systems, and Cheminformatics, Energy Processes, Power Generation, CO2 Capture/Utilization, Sustainable Transportation Fuels.
• Modeling and simulation capabilities using a variety of state-of-the-art platforms:
  • gPROMS: Equation-oriented environment for dynamic simulation & optimization
  • Dymola (Modelica): Acausal dynamic modeling and simulation of cyber-physical sustems
  • Comsol Multiphysics: Multiphysics Modeling, Finite Element Analysis, and Engineering Simulation Software
  • GAMS: High-level modeling system for mathematical programming and optimization
  • MATLAB: Programming environment for programming, data analysis, and numerical computation
  • AspenONE: Process flow charting, steady-state simulation/optimization and advance process control development.
• For more detailed information, please consult http://pdsol.engr.uconn.edu

Google Scholar Profile

George Bollas