Dr. G.K. Venayagamoorthy, assistant professor in the electrical and computer engineering department at UMR, and two colleagues recently received a second-place paper award from the Industrial Automation and Control Committee (IACC) of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Industry Applications Society for their research into the use of advanced intelligent techniques to operate electric power plants close to their limits. The intelligent control techniques, if implemented on a power grid, could potentially minimize blackouts that result from small and large disturbances.

The IACC recognizes three prize papers annually and bases its selection on the extent of innovation, the importance and near-term applicability, the balance combination of theoretical and experimental content, and clarity of thoughts and presentation of ideas in the paper.

Venayagamoorthy, along with Jung-Wook Park of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Dr. Ron Harley of the Georgia Institute of Technology, co-authored the paper that served as the basis for the award. Titled "Adaptive-Critic-Based Optimal Neurocontrol for Synchronous Generators in a Power System Using MLP/RBF Neural Networks," the paper was presented at the Industry Applications Society annual meeting last year and was recently published in the September/October 2003 issue of IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications.