2025 Internship Project Overview

Spearheaded by Princeton researchers, the Net-Zero America Project is one of the most groundbreaking and impactful energy studies in the country, revealing how thousands of projects can contribute to equilibrium using current technology and resources. While conventional project sequencing models assume perfect coordination among players in the industry, they overlook interdependencies between project completion, external constraints and unconventional what-ifs. I spent the summer developing a comprehensive framework to streamline the optimization of completion times based on constraints derived from large-scale datasets. In practice, potential blockades such as regulatory approval and funding allocation cause various stages of an asset’s development cycle to be completed at random, yet historical experience can be analyzed to derive probability distributions. Solvers like Google CP-SAT were used to perform stochastic optimization whereas Monte Carlo simulations helped balance the risk of bottlenecks.

 

ORGANIZATION/RESEARCH GROUP

Energy Systems Analysis Group, Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, Princeton University

LOCATION

Princeton, New Jersey

 

Interns

Eshan Ankulkar ’27
Major: Operations Research and Financial Engineering
Minor(s): Sustainable Energy
"This internship provided me with industrial software experience and the freedom to toy around with multiple research pathways—valuable insights that will be impactful in my future career. I really enjoyed improvising on ideas and frameworks established by the same team that headed a crucial nationwide study in climate analysis. Understanding the large scope of the project and its potential to evolve into a functional interface for policymakers and engineers everywhere is an exciting venture! I’m grateful to HMEI and my supervisors for providing me the scope to explore the vast possibilities of project management and operations research."

Click to view the end-of-project presentation

 

Chris Greig
Theodora D. ’78 & William H. Walton III ’74 Senior Research Scientist, Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

 

Mentors

  • Dominic Davis, Associate Research Scholar, Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment