Alex Byrne '03
Alex grew up in Kent, Washington and attended Holy Names Academy, an all-girls Catholic high school on the eastern slope of Capitol Hill in Seattle, Washington. She started at Seattle University as a mechanical engineering student in Fall Quarter of 1999.
After her sophomore year, she interned at Seattle City Light and continued to work there throughout college, including during summer breaks. She also performed undergraduate research with Professor Shuman on pollutant formation during combustion. The result was published in the Journal of Power and Energy.* For her Senior Design Project, Alex worked with Siemens Ultrasound and analyzed the temperature profile of an ultrasonic probe using finite element analysis.
Upon graduation in 2003, she was given a full-time position at Seattle City Light. During her tenure there, she worked on projects that encompassed almost every aspect of mechanical engineering. In particular, she worked on projects involving the Upper Skagit River Project, a series of hydroelectric dams on the Skagit River and Boundary Dam on the Pend Oreille River, that together provide a quarter of electric power consumed by Seattle. She also worked on relicensing efforts addressing water quality issues for the river and reservoir. After three years, Alex moved to Global Energy Concepts (GEC), a wind energy consulting firm in Seattle, Washington. At GEC, she worked on energy assessments, site suitability and due diligence for wind farms in the pre-construction phase as well as existing wind farms. Her projects included conducting field work at wind farms throughout United States and Canada.
Alex started her graduate study in the Fall Quarter of 2007 at UC Berkeley, specializing in Controls. Her graduate study is being funded by the University of California’s Chancellor's Fellowship and a smaller fellowship from Society of Women Engineers (SWE). For her master's research, she is developing a feed-forward control system that uses real-time LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) data on incoming wind fields to adjust variables in the generator torque, as well as the yaw and blade pitch to maximize the electric power generation. Alex is conducting her research under the guidance of Professor Roberto Horowitz, with support from engineers at GEC. Upon graduating with her master's degree, scheduled for December 2008, she plans to continue to devote her "energy" to renewable energy solutions.
*Rutar, T., Lee, J. C. Y., Dagaut, P., Malte, P.C., and Byrne, A. A. “NOx formation pathways in lean-premixed-prevapourized combustion of fuels with carbon-to-hydrogen ratio between 0.25 and 0.88” Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers Part A: Journal of Power and Energy, Vol. 221, No S3, 2007, pp 387-398
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[07/2008] Photograph: Alex on top of a wind turbine (strapped down with Personal Protective Equipments) courtesy of Alex Byrne, used with permission.