Sam Molnar’s research work focuses on developing novel visualization designs and interaction techniques to support power system stakeholders' analyses for many scenarios such as real-time operations, model comparisons, state estimation, science communication, etc. Her doctoral work focused on the oscillatory changes to power system dynamics with renewable integration and defines new measures to help describe these changes.

Research Interests

Analysis & Visualization of Power Systems

Education

Ph.D., Computer Science, University of Colorado Boulder

M.S., Computer Science, University of Colorado Boulder

B.S., Physics, University of Denver

Professional Experience

Graduate Research Assistant, NREL (2017–Current)

Graduate Part-Time Instructor, University of Colorado Boulder (2021)

Research Assistant, University of Colorado Boulder (2017)

Teaching Assistant, University of Colorado Boulder (2015-2016)

Research Assistant, University of Denver (2014–2015)

Featured Work

Oscillatory Spreading and Inertia in Power Grids, Chaos (2021)

Visualizing Electrical Power Systems as Flow Fields, Proceedings of the Workshop on Visualisation in Environmental Sciences (2018)

Computational Topology Techniques for Characterizing Time-Series Data, The Sixteenth International Symposium on Intelligent Data Analysis (2017)

Equilibration Processes During Gas Uptake Inside Narrow Pores, Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics (2015)

Awards and Honors

Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant (2016)

Computer Science Department Outstanding Service Award (2016)