February ’26 ASPIRE Student Section

ASPIRE students Mackay Baugh and Zac Maughan representing ASPIRE at the USU Advancement event.

Welcome to our ASPIRE Student Newsletter!

Applications are now open for ASPIRE’s Council of Presidents leadership team and for the Spring 2026 Cohort trip!

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In this section we share upcoming events, celebrate student successes, and highlight their research and hard work. Check out our ASPIRE students’ most recent accomplishments!

Upcoming Events

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Student Highlights:

ASPIRE students Vatan Mehar, Isaac Abram, and Nick Frooninckx are characterizing ASPIRE's 3 phase rectangular coils at the INDOT DWPT pilot
ASPIRE students Vatan Mehar (left), Isaac Abram (center), and Nick Frooninckx (right) are characterizing ASPIRE’s 3-phase rectangular coils at the INDOT DWPT pilot.

We’d like to recognize the efforts of Purdue Ph.D. students Vatan Mehar, Nick Frooninckx, and Isaac Abram, who were instrumental in designing, deploying, and successfully testing the Indiana DWPT pilot project, which was validated in the fall of 2025. For example, Vatan Mehar, who recently passed his Ph.D. qualifying exam, works on novel architectures for reducing the cost of power electronics for the roadway and the vehicle, which is a key requirement of deploying 1000 mi of electric roadways.

Congratulations to Noelia Garcia Weidling for her upcoming graduation this semester. She has been working with the Market Intelligence team on ASPIRE research for almost 3 years and has done an amazing job. Her research journey culminated in a presentation at the U.S. Association of Energy Economics conference last month.

Pilots, Projects, and Technology Updates

  • Mario Harper’s team (Chandler, Jarron, Joe, and Brooklyn) contributed to developing an improved diagnostic visualization interface that has been particularly well received by transit partners. The student’s work significantly improved usability and interpretability of real-time charger health data, supporting operational decision-making.
  • New graduate student, Grant Coleman, has been learning from Emma Rieves how to run InMAP so that he can take over the air quality and health modeling of Task 3.4b.
  • Ph.D. Candidate Noah Horesh and his team at ASPIRE have been modeling U.S. freight travel and energy consumption. Learn more about his team’s research.
  • Patrick Singleton’s student Aleks Paskett has been working on a dashboard to visualize and analyze Utah EV registration data. Discover details about their research.

Event Highlights

Mackay Baugh (left) with Mario Harper and Zac Maughan teaching USU President Brad Mortensen (right) how to control Spot the robotic dog.

ASPIRE students Zac Maughan, Mackay Baugh, and Kayleigh Kearsley represented ASPIRE along with Mario Harper and James Campbell at the USU Advancement Event at the Loveland Living Planet Aquarium, offering insights about the Center’s research, specifically concerning wireless power charging, to USU alumni and guests on February 6.

Presentations & Publications

Several of our students recently published or presented their research, and several others had papers and abstracts that were accepted for publication and/or presentation.

Project 1: Charging Systems of the Future

  • S. Sinha, Z. Ahmed, J. Diebold, D. Maksimovic, “A High-Frequency Planar Transformer with Medium-Voltage Isolation and Embedded Thermal Management,” accepted for presentation at IEEE APEC 2026.
  • Hang Dai’s team presented the research to IIB members WiTricity and Eaton Corporation. Received feedback from WiTricity’s engineer for improving the EV WPT EMC standards study, which has been completed.
  • Prepared one digest that will be submitted to a technical conference in 2026.
  • 6 papers accepted for publication at the APEC 2026 conference that will be hosted in March, 2026, the authors are Dakota Goodrich, Shubhangi Gurudiwan, Aditya Zade, and Sanat Poddar.
  • A journal paper has been published: A. Zade, S. Gurudiwan and R. Zane, “98.3% Efficient Multiport System with Multi-Directional Power Flow to Integrate Battery Storage/Renewables with the Grid for EV Charging,” in IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, doi: 10.1109/TPEL.2025.3619441.
  • Three Ph.D. Students who successfully defended their thesis and graduated. They are Shubhangi Gurudiwan, Aditya Zade, and Sanat Poddar.
  • A journal paper has been published: T. Newbolt, P. Mandal, H. Wang and R. Zane, “A Novel Approach to Dual-Lane Microscopic Simulations for Large-Scale In-Motion Electric Roadway Charging Load Infrastructure,” in IEEE Transactions on Transportation Electrification, doi: 10.1109/TTE.2025.3611372.
  • Two journal papers have been submitted by Arifa Sultana and Paul Bradford.
  • One conference paper from Jackson Morgan at NAPS: J. Morgan, A. Al Mehadi, A. Sultana, H. Wang and R. Zane, “Reservation-Based Optimization of Electric Vehicle Charging Considering Dynamic Pricing and Operating Envelopes,” 2025 57th North American Power Symposium (NAPS), Storrs, CT, USA, 2025, pp. 1-6, doi: 10.1109/NAPS66256.2025.11272191.

Project 2: Electrified Roadways

  • R. Sarabia-Soto, S.S. Rashid, D. Etta and K.K. Afridi, “Loss Reduction in Pavement-Embedded Multi-MHz Capacitive Wireless Charging Systems for Electric Vehicles,” Proceedings of IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition (ECCE), Philadelphia, PA, October 2025 (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11260374).
  • D. Etta, S.S. Rashid and K.K. Afridi, “A 44.3-kW High Performance Multi-MHz Capacitive Wireless Power Transfer System for Electric Vehicle Charging,” Proceedings of IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition (ECCE), Philadelphia, PA, October 2025 (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11260344).
  • 1 paper accepted for publication at the APEC 2026, and 1 journal paper has been submitted, both are from Mckay Waite.

Project 3: Integrated Systems

  • Presented to power electronics group at ORNL (October 2025), presented to IEEE power electronics group at University of Auckland (Nov. 2025), presented to Inductive Power Transfer group at University of Auckland (Nov. 2025).
  • Bruno Moras and his team had several recent accomplishments:
    • Preferences in the secondary EV market: Published paper in the International Journal of Sustainable Transportation.
    • Additional EV Registration Fee: Poster presented at the ASPIRE Annual Meeting 2025, Institute for a Sustainable Future (ISF) Research Expo 2025 and ITE Indiana Annual Poster Session.
    • Public perceptions about the impacts of DWPT: Accepted poster at Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting. Paper submitted to the journal Case studies on Transportation Policy, currently is under review.
  • Sarangji Jayaram and her team present their research on EV VMT and charging behavior analysis at the Indiana ITE Poster Session (Nov 2025). It was also accepted for presentation at Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting (TRBAM) 2026, and under review with Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment.

Project 4: Pathways

  • Zinnah, F., Minichiello, A., & Asghar, M. (2025). Enhancing STEM Workforce Development via Non-Degree Credentialing: A Systematic Literature Review. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/10668926.2025.2582707
  • Polly Parkinson published an article in Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives as first author: “Designing electric vehicle charging infrastructure to benefit residents in a near-port community.” https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trip.2025.101696