The Department of Electrical Power Engineering under the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment at the Durban University of Technology (DUT) recently hosted the distinguished Professor Kumar Venayagamoorthy to deliver a Public Lecture on Artificial Intelligence for Complex and/or Critical Networks at the Urban Futures Centre, Steve Biko campus in Durban. The event was also held online via MS Teams.
Prof Venayagamoorthy is currently the Duke Energy Distinguished Professor of Power Engineering and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Clemson University, USA. Prior to that, he was a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, USA from 2002 to 2011.
Delivering the opening remarks was the Acting Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, Professor Katleho Moloi who requested the guests to give the highly skilled Prof Venayagamoorthy their undivided attention. He thanked Prof Venayagamoorthy for accepting the invitation to deliver the public lecture and for his willingness to share his skills and expertise.
Introducing the guest speaker was Dr Kayode Akindeji, Acting Head of Department of Electrical Power Engineering at DUT.
“He is the Founder and Director of the Real-Time Power and Intelligent Systems (RTPIS) Laboratory. His research interests are in the development and innovation of artificial intelligence, power systems and smart grid technologies. He is an inventor of technologies for scalable computational intelligence for complex systems and dynamic stochastic optimal power flow,” added Dr Akindeji.
He further shared that the Artificial Intelligence (AI) expert is the Vice-President for Industry Relations of the International Neural Network Society (INNS) and a Member of the INNS Board of Governors. He is also the Editor of the IEEE Press Series on Power and Energy Systems and a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS), Industry Applications Society (IAS), Industrial Electronics Society (IES) and Power and Energy Society (PES).
Prof Venayagamoorthy was excited to be back at DUT, recalling his time as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Electronic Engineering during the period of 1996 to 2002. He began his presentation by giving a brief background of his institution, Clemson University. He revealed that it is suited in a beautiful state of South Carolina, was founded in 1889 and currently has over 27 000 students. According to Prof Venayagamoorthy, Clemson University strives to establish public/private partnerships in sustainable technologies that promotes economic development. He shared images of the university’s state-of-the-art real time power and intelligent systems laboratory.
He indicated that he has been working in AI for 30 years having started at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and later moved to Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, in Nigeria. He has published over 500 papers on artificial intelligence. His presentation looked into data and computational intelligence and share insight on the cellular computational networks (CCNs). He also give a brief overview of the CCN applications.
“The complex systems are composed of many components which may interact with each other. They are represented as a network where the nodes represent the components and links their interactions. When we talk about critical networks, these are networks that need to maintain reliability, security, scalability, resilience and must be optimised,” shared Prof Venayagamoorthy.
He also spoke at length about global emissions, climate disaster avoidance and the smart grid. He defined the smart grid as a modernised grid that has the ability of self-healing and be able to resist attacks. He encouraged DUT to consider using solar power energy as it has ample space to run this type of project. He believes DUT would be able to produce enough energy for the university.
Speaking on Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies, Prof Venayagamoorthy believes these could allow businesses to analyse unstructured data in a smarter and faster way.
“These technologies can also discover patterns and trends in structured data that are not easily observable. Furthermore, the volume of this data is so vast it causes a major strain on traditional (including AI/ML) models of computing where everything is controlled and analysed centrally. New frameworks and methodologies are needed to turn complex data into insights, technologies into strategy, and opportunities into value and responsibility, and bring micro-analytics closer to the end-customer,” he shared.
The seminar presented a distributed computational framework for intelligent data analytics and decision-making, known as the cellular computational network (CCN). Several case studies of predictive and/or prescriptive analytics with cellular computational networks for smart grid network operations and management were presented.
The dynamic Prof Venayagamoorthy fascinated the attendees with his powerful presentation. He then held a robust question and answer session and further met with the Department of Electrical Power Engineering to share how they can incorporate AI into the programmes. He was happy to visit the departmental laboratory and to engage with the students.
Pictured: Acting Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, Professor Katleho Moloi with staff members appreciating Prof Kumar Venayagamoorthy after delivering a powerful Public Lectures on Artificial Intelligence.
Photographer: Mnqobi Ngobese.
Simangele Zuma
