B.S., Dance and Mathematics, University of Wisconsin-Madison
M.S., Electrical Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison
After Julia Lindberg graduated from UW-Madison in 2016 with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and in dance, she knew she wanted to work on applied problems for her PhD. After discussions with fellow students and faculty, she realized that engineering would allow her to bring some of her work in theory to real-world problems.
Lindberg says the diverse range of research being conducted across the College of Engineering is what convinced her to stay at UW-Madison for her graduate work, and she knew she would find something interesting to focus on.
During the first year of her PhD, she was drawn into the world of power engineering. Now, the Waukesha, Wisconsin native is applying techniques from algebraic geometry to problems in power engineering. Currently, she’s studying power flow equations and the optimal power flow problem. “Many difficulties in power engineering,” she says, “require solving large-scale problems efficiently. But algebraic geometry techniques typically only work for small problems.” She is hoping to develop ways to scale up those techniques so she can bridge the gap, and they apply to those bigger problems.
While she doesn’t have time for formal extracurricular activities, Lindberg spends her free time hanging out with her family and dog Giselle, reading, jogging, and occasionally taking a contemporary dance class.
In 2019, she spent the summer at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory working with its grid integration group. There, she helped develop optimization models for the capacity expansion of renewable energy sources and algorithms that could compute those models more efficiently.
Currently in the third year of her PhD, Lindberg hopes to remain in academia when she graduates in May 2022.