Prof. Vijay Modi received his PhD from Cornell (1984) and joined Columbia University Mechanical Engineering Department faculty in 1986, after a Postdoc at MIT. His current areas of research interest fall broadly under two themes. One, progressive decarbonization of energy systems with a particular focus on space heating and electric vehicle loads. Two, the intertwined issues of energy access, economic growth, and planning for infrastructure and development. Much of this effort is aimed at analysis and field experiments/data to support investment prioritization.
His laboratory has been responsible for innovations such as a low-cost charge/discharge circuit for lead acid batteries, portable solar lantern (2006), fully digital pay-as-you-go minigrids (Sharedsolar, 2011), battery-less PAYG smallholder irrigation systems (2013-15) and tools such as “Network Planner” for making technology choices under demographic, demand and geographic variations. His laboratory developed a free open-source app called FormHub, that has used widely for recording field data.