We warmly congratulate Dr. techn. Agnes Poks on the award presented to her for her doctoral thesis by the Vehicle Industry Association Anniversary Foundation of the Austrian Vehicle Industry Association. Agnes Poks was awarded third prize for her doctoral thesis, *Predictive Control Concepts for Electric Refrigeration Vehicles*, which was completed at the Institute of Mechanics and Mechatronics at the Vienna University of Technology under the supervision of Univ.-Prof. Dr Martin Kozek. The award ceremony will take place on 3 July 2026 in the Great Hall of the Vienna University of Technology as part of an academic ceremony. The award-winning work focuses on the development of predictive control and operational concepts for electric delivery vehicles equipped with refrigeration units. It takes a holistic approach to driving dynamics, battery management and the thermal behaviour of the refrigeration system in order to improve energy consumption, range and operational safety.
A key contribution of this doctoral thesis lies in a distributed and scalable control architecture for thermal energy systems in electric vehicles. This enables multiple cooling and energy modules to be operated in a coordinated manner, rather than being controlled individually and locally. In addition, model-based methods for fault detection and isolation were developed to enhance the reliability of such systems in real-world operation. The concepts developed were validated through simulation, on a test bench and on a real prototype of an electric refrigerated vehicle. The results show that integrated predictive control and diagnostic methods can make a significant contribution to the energy-efficient and reliable operation of electric refrigerated vehicles.
The thesis thus bridges the gap between modern control engineering and industrial applications, and addresses current challenges facing the automotive industry in the field of electric, energy-efficient commercial and delivery vehicles.
Following her PhD, Dr. techn. Agnes Poks is working as a postdoctoral researcher in the Technical Dynamics and Vehicle Dynamics Research Group at the Institute of Mechanics and Mechatronics at TU Wien. There, she is focusing on current research topics in the field of model-based and data-driven vehicle dynamics, digital twins, and safe learning-based methods for autonomous and automated vehicles. In doing so, she is building on her expertise in predictive control and further developing new approaches for future vehicle systems.