Working on

What I'm working on

This page is my attempt to keep track of all the things I'm working on...

Energy systems

• Using Reinforcement Learning to control the operation of storage systems (with Arduin Findeis and Fiodar Kazhamiaka)
• Studying the impact of climate change on the transmission grid (with Petr Dolezal and Emily Shuckburgh)
• Controlling EV charging to allow condominiums and commercial building to become 24/7 renewable-powered (with Harsimrat Bhundar and Lukasz Golab, with support from SWTCH Energy, Inc.)
• Studying the impact of soiling on solar panels (with Abhinav Bora (Waterloo), Sharat Singh and Hugh Hunt (Quadrical))

Forest conservation and restoration

• Cambridge Centre for Carbon Credits (with Tom Swinfield, Anil Madhavapeddy, David Coomes, and Andrew Balmford)
• Estimating the rate of carbon sequestration in tropical forests (with Amelia Holcomb, Simon Mathis and David Coomes)

Misc.

• Designing an index to measure researcher influence and also identify potential research fraud (with Ankai Jie)

Completed work and outcomes

Sadly, most of my work (as with many other researchers) has led nowhere... As Lord Kelvin said, “One word characterises the most strenuous of the efforts for the advancement of science that I have made perseveringly during fifty-five years; that word is FAILURE.”

Summer 2021

• Estimating the reduction in lighting levels of commercial buildings from Earth observation (with Abhinav Bora)
• Using DNNs to extrapolate Earth observation data to cloudy regions (with Harsimrat Bhundar and Clement Atzberger)
• Privacy-preserving crowdsensing (with Bihan Liu, Steven Chai, and Fiodar Kazhamiaka)

Lent 2021

• Using Time-of-flight sensors on mobile phones for depth-assisted segmentation of tree images (with Bill Tong, Megan Penny, and Amelia Holcomb)
  • A. Holcomb, B. Tong, M. Penny, and S. Keshav, Measuring Forest Carbon with Mobile Phones, Poster Proc. ACM Mobisys, Winner of the Best Poster Award, June 2021.

• Linking Earth observation to carbon sequestration certificates (with Alan Marko, Tom Shan, and David Liu)
• Computing the solar and storage system sizing for the British Antarctic Survey base in Rothera, Antarctica (with Brad Huang, Fiodar Kazhamiaka, and Nopi Exizidou)
  • B.G. Huang, F. Kazhamiaka, and S. Keshav, Sizing Solar Panels and Storage for Multiple Roofs, To Appear, Proc. ACM eEnergy, June 2021.
• Speeding up Hyperledger Fabric with pre-validation (with Rishav Agarwal, Christian Gorenflo, and Lukasz Golab)
• Implementing RCanopus (with Christian Gorenflo, Ashwin Sekhari, Qingnan Duan, Linguan Wang, Lukasz Golab, Bernard Wong, and (at UMass) Stephen Lee and Prashant Shenoy)
• Creating a trusted marketplace for nature-based solutions (with Tom Shan, Hector Wei, Derek Sorensen, Anil Madhavapeddy)

Fall 2020

• Improving the performance of Individual-Based Models for forests (with Siyi Ji)
• Supporting time-based smart contracts in Hyperledger Fabric (with Aritra Mitra, Christian Gorenflo, and Lukasz Golab)
  • A. Mitra, C. Gorenflo, L. Golab, and S. Keshav, TimeFabric: Trusted Time for Hyperledger Fabric, To Appear, Proc. FAB, May 2021.
• Curating datasets collected from ISS4E over the past decade (with Siqing Huo)
  • O. Ardakanian, S. Huo, and S. Keshav, 2020, 6-second load measurement dataset,https://doi.org/10.5683/SP2/R4SVBF, University of Waterloo Dataverse, December 2020.
  • J.Y. Lin, C. Ograda-Bratu, S. Huo, and S. Keshav, 2020, Detecting Snow Covered Solar Panels Dataset, https://doi.org/10.5683/SP2/ITQPHZ, University of Waterloo Dataverse, December 2020.
  • S. Doubov, C. Ograda-Bratu, S. Huo, S. Keshav, 2020, Camera-based Occupancy Detection Dataset, https://doi.org/10.5683/SP2/X30EPQ, University of Waterloo Dataverse, December 2020.
  • Y. Aussat, C. Ograda-Bratu, S. Huo, S. Keshav, "Office Light Level dataset", https://doi.org/10.5683/SP2/3BCADM, University of Waterloo Dataverse, November 2020.
  • A. Rabbani, C. Ograda-Bratu, S. Huo, S. Keshav, "Personal thermal comfort and occupancy dataset", https://doi.org/10.5683/SP2/2NWMDY, University of Waterloo Dataverse, November 2020.
  • C. Gorenflo, I.Rio, L. Golab, C. Ograda-Bratu, S. Huo, S. Keshav, "Webike dataset", https://doi.org/10.5683/SP2/7OAETS, University of Waterloo Dataverse, November 2020.

Summer 2020

• Designing a trusted smart meter to ensure that data that enters a blockchain can be relied upon. (with Dimcho Karakashev and Sergey Gorbunov)
  • D. Karakashev, S. Gorbunov, and S. Keshav, "Making Renewable Energy Certificates Efficient, Trustworthy, and Anonymous," Proc. IEEE SmartGridComm, November 2020.
• Estimating IUCN Red List status of birds from Earth observation (with David Wesby, David Coomes, BirdLife International, and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds)
• Creating a website for homeowners and businesses to determine how many solar panels and how large a storage battery to buy to achieve a certain level of grid independence (with Brad Huang and Fiodar Kazhamiaka)

Winter/Spring 2020

• Raspberry-Pi system to read analog meters (with Ivy Liu, Yerbol Aussat, and Costin Ograda-Bratu)
  • Github link to source code
• Better teleconferencing (with David Adeboye)
  • Master's report
• Determining when to resize home energy storage systems
  • Bachelor's thesis
  • J. Deller and S. Keshav, "The Benefits of Dynamically Resizing Storage," Proc. Energy Storage Workshop at ACM eEnergy 2020,, June 2020.

Fall 2019

• Conflict resolution for hot keys in Fabric
  • C. Gorenflo, L. Golab, S. Keshav, "XOX Fabric: A hybrid approach to blockchain transaction execution," Proc. IEEE ICBC, 2020.

• Using RFID-based sensors for determining soil moisture level
  • J. Wang, L. Chang, S. Aggarwal, O. Abari, and S. Keshav, "Soil Moisture Sensing with Commodity RFID Systems," Proc. ACM Mobisys, 2020.

Summer 2019

• Improving the performance of Hyperledger Fabric
  • Gorenflo, S. Lee, L. Golab, S. Keshav. FastFabric: Scaling Hyperledger Fabric to 20,000 Transactions per Second, Proc. IEEE ICBC, May 2019.
• Using Fabric to provide an audit trail for electric vehicle charging
  • C. Gorenflo, L. Golab, and S. Keshav, Mitigating Trust Issues in Electric Vehicle Charging using a Blockchain, Proc. ACM eEnergy 2019, June 2019.
• Using deep neural networks to compute optimal (MPC-computed) storage operation strategies
  • F. Kazhamiaka, S. Keshav, and C. Rosenberg, Adaptive Battery Control with Neural Networks, Proc. AMLIES Workshop at ACM eEnergy 2019, June 2019.
• Using cloud cover and solar panel images to detect panel soiling and shadowing (with Yingjie Chen)

Spring 2019

• Using IoT to reduce energy costs of lighting (with Yerbol Aussat)

• Managing data consent on Fabric
  • * R. Agarwal, D. Kumar , L. Golab, S. Keshav, "Consentio: Managing Consent to Data Access using Permissioned Blockchains," Proc. IEEE ICBC, 2020.

• Reducing the cost of personal thermal comfort systems (with Costin Ograda-Bratu)

Winter 2019

• Using computer vision algorithms to estimate the degree of snow cover on solar panels (with Jia Ying Lin)

• Improving the accuracy of RFID-based sensors (with Ju Wang and Omid Abari)
  • J. Wang, O. Abari, L. Chang, and S. Keshav, Are RFID Sensing Systems Ready for the Real World?, Proc. Mobisys 2019, June 2019

• Designing and building an off-grid system to capture e-scooter activity and accidents (with Tingyun Liu and Lime Inc.)

• Improving the description of research outcomes from my energy systems research (with Shela Qiu)

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Last updated May 2021