Meet Assistant Research Professor Stewart Isaacs

Stewart Isaacs joined Carnegie Mellon University Africa as an assistant research professor in January, interested in helping to advance decentralized energy systems on the continent.

His interest in the field began while he was earning his B.S. degree in mechanical engineering at Stanford University. Isaacs worked with the social enterprise ÉnergieRich to develop a solar powered chicken egg incubator for poultry farmers in Burkina Faso, West Africa.

It was there that he saw the positive impact that decentralized solar power could have throughout the Sahel, the semi-arid region of Africa which separates the Sahara Desert from the tropical savannas to the south and spans parts of Burkina Faso and Nigeria. During Harmattan, the annual dry season, dust hinders solar energy generation by collecting on the solar panels and reducing incoming sunlight while suspended in the air above the panels.

Issacs earned his master’s and doctoral degrees in aeronautics and astronautics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he initially studied sustainable aviation and worked on quantifying the environmental impacts of electro synthetic jet fuels.

But having seen the negative impact that dust had on hospitals and farmers who depended on the solar panels in Burkina Faso, he was inspired to pivot to research that could help secure renewable energy resources, including both ways to mitigate the effects of dust on decentralized photovoltaic systems in West Africa, as well as the development of reliable decentralized energy systems broadly.

Isaacs knew that centralized grids had never reliably reached many communities, and that decentralized solar could advance energy sovereignty and provide energy systems that actually work for the under-resourced communities that need them most.

Improving the supply of electric power impacts food production and security in many ways. Poultry farmers, for example, can increase hatch rates to a commercial scale when they have consistent power for their incubators and water supply.

His new post at CMU-Africa will allow him to continue developing ASMONET (Ashesi Solar Monitoring Network), an IoT-enabled, ground-based, and low-cost sensor system designed to fill major data gaps that he found during his thesis work. Such data gaps limit the ability to understand the full effects of dust and air quality on solar panel performance.

His experience in aerospace, wind-tunnel testing, and satellite data analysis will also help to inform his efforts to contribute to the development of SEADR, the Shape Enhanced Aerodynamic Dust Removal technology that is used to modify solar panel geometry to harness wind for passive dust removal.

This semester, Isaacs has been teaching data analytics and research methods in engineering. He is especially excited to be working with the CMU-Africa students, who he says are serious about what they are learning and how they can make an impact in Africa.  He says it is a great privilege to be able to connect to the communities he wants to help.