Polsky Research Fellow, 2026
Kavi Patel is a third-year at the College, pursuing a B.S. in Computer Science and a B.A. in Economics. Previously, he has consulted for a leading U.S. energy derivatives exchange, advising on its entrance into private markets, and conducted equity research for a wealth management firm on companies focused on enhancing digital infrastructure, grid connectivity, and industrial networks. His broader interests center on how capital is deployed to finance the infrastructure underpinning the energy transition.
As a Polsky Research Fellow, Patel worked to analyze Australian energy and FCAS markets to screen for collusive pricing behavior driven by increased auto-bidder usage. He aggregated, cleaned, and visualized historical market data from the Australian Energy Market Operator using Midway3 (a high-performance cluster hosted by the University’s Research Computing Center). He created and managed automated workflows for file organizations to bridge our work across GitHub, the HPC, and Box Drive, as well as helped train and onboard new members on the team. Finally, he worked on creating final visualizations for a working paper.
“I plan on pursuing a career focusing on financing the energy transition, so this research has given me a better perspective of the developing landscape, as well as helped me better understand the challenges facing the market. Also, I have passively been able to better understand industry-specific lingo and how foreign energy markets differ from our domestic ones.”