Ojas Pradhan successfully defended his PhD thesis titled “A Dynamic Bayesian Network (DBN) Framework for Data-Driven Fault Diagnosis and Prognosis of Smart Building Systems”. The research presented contributes to the development of a robust and cost-effective DBN-based framework for fault diagnosis and prognosis of building HVAC systems. Potential solutions to existing challenges of implementing data-driven strategies, such as obtaining high-quality datasets, handling and repairing missing data, establishing baseline model for detecting abnormalities and extracting temporal features for variate selection of high dimensional data are also examined in this thesis.

Ojas joined the BSEG team as an undergraduate researcher in 2017 and has worked on several projects funded by the US Department of Energy (DOE), National Science Foundation (NSF), and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Ojas has won multiple awards for his work and has recently been nominated for 2023 Drexel Research Excellence Award.

We congratulate Ojas on this huge milestone and for all his contributions to the BSEG lab and the university at large. Regular updates on his work can be seen on his website here.