Hollis Belnap, a graduate student in Electrical and Computer Engineering, received a national honor by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering in May 2026.
The Power & Energy Society of IEEE held a student poster contest through its Power Engineering Education Committee.
Hollis won a Third Place Award in the Graduate Student Category for the poster “Supporting Communities and Grid During Heatwaves with Resilience Hubs.”
“My poster focused on resilience hubs and their role in supporting both grid and community resilience during heatwaves,” Hollis says.
Resilience hubs like libraries or other community centers can be equipped with resources like solar panels, to provide a safer indoor climate during extreme heat.
Hollis’ goal, with the assistance from Dr. Masood Parvania, was to develop a design and siting framework for resilience hubs in Salt Lake City. The community centers would become active grid assets instead of passive backup systems.
“Essentially, we wanted to formalize the idea of a resilience hub, and cement them as community serving grid assets, capable of micro-grid operation, critical load backup, and electricity market participants, capable of helping grid operators though actions like peak load shedding and circuit overload mitigation,” says Hollis.
Hollis says that “a lot of the groundwork had to be built from scratch” for this project. Hollis acknowledges “wonderful collaborators and an incredibly supportive advisor” to manage the challenges that would come up.
“Prof. Parvania was instrumental throughout the project. He contributed to the initial problem definition, provided ongoing technical review and feedback, and offered valuable suggestions and review of the mathematical modeling underlying the framework. He has also been instrumental in helping find and support places to publish and share the work,” Hollis says.
Hollis said that the award was a “wonderful and unexpected surprise” during the trip to Chicago for the IEEE conference poster session.
