Savannah Goodman

Savannah Goodman

Grainger Engineer, 2014

I am currently leading the Modeling & Simulation team at Blueprint Power, a company that unlocks new revenue for real-estate owners by transforming their buildings into power plants and connecting them to energy markets. My team is developing the optimization and machine learning models that enable Blueprint’s platform to intelligently operate on-site energy assets in order to maximize revenue in various on-site, utility level, and wholesale energy markets.

My scholarship helped fund my international travel to Uganda, during which I learned all about local water and energy issues, which I would not have been able to fully grasp without going to the country and talking with local people directly. Ultimately, this experience incited my passion for global energy access and has led me to pursue a career focused on distributed energy resources and microgrids.

While my studies at Illinois were focused on environmental resiliency, the COVID-19 pandemic has certainly made me think a lot more about the need for resilient cities, college campuses, health care systems, workplaces, etc. This crisis has strengthened my perspective on the critical need for philanthropic support of technology and policy development to help make these systems more resilient. I am very proud to be a Grainger Engineering alumna. I believe that The Grainger College of Engineering truly sets up its students for success by teaching them the fundamental engineering principles, providing them opportunities to apply those learnings through class projects and extracurriculars, and giving students the self-confidence to go out into the real world and make an impact.