Ben Pierce (he/him) is originally from Columbus, OH. Ben is a first-year PhD student in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at UCSD. He is advised by Professor Jan Kleissl. Ben received a B.S. degree in Computer Science from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH in 2021. At CWRU, Ben’s undergraduate research focused on materials data science with particular application towards solar energy. Since graduating, Ben has worked at Sandia National Laboratories in the Photovoltaics and Materials Technologies group. In 2023, Ben received a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to study at UCSD, and is excited to get started with the new (to him) field of grid integration.

Ben’s research focuses on the intersection between renewable energy and data-driven methods. Ben has worked on a wide range of problems, such as AlGaN LED manufacturing, solar resource forecasting, and photovoltaic degradation. The common theme in his work is spotting isomorphisms between problems and then utilizing standard computational algorithms in a wide range of applications. 

Ben Pierce’s Curriculum Vitae