I’m an Associate Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. My current research interests include developing machine l learning and optimization algorithms for electric power grids and networked systems.
See here for our latest manuscripts and current projects. [Google Scholar] [LinkedIn]
Updates:
- 7/2025: We have two papers at ICML 2025, Vancouver: SITAlign: Bounded Rationality for LLMs: Satisficing Alignment at Inference-Time, and LEVIS: Large Exact Verifiable Input Spaces for Neural Networks
- 6/2025: We have developed a toolbox, PGLib-CO2, for grid carbon computing/optimization by enriching the popular PGLib-OPF test systems with generator-level carbon emission information. [Github][Paper]
- 6/2025: Dr. Wenting Li joined our group as a research scientist. Welcome Wenting!
- 3/2025: Group alum Yuqi Zhou is nominated as a Finalists for the 2025 IEEE PES Outstanding Dissertation Award. Yuqi will present his thesis work at the upcoming IEEE PES General Meeting (in Austin) this July. Congrats Yuqi!
- 10/2024: Mohamad won the Best Paper Presentation Award at NAPS 2024, El Paso, TX. Congratulations Mohamad!
- 10/2024: Sol, Fatima, and Min-seung joined our group. Welcome all!
- 3/2024: Hao was selected as an ONR Senior Summer Faculty Fellow, to conduct a 10-week research collaboration with NIWC-Pacific at San Diego, CA. Collaborative paper: Multi-Forecast Model Predictive Control for Robust Topic Management in Maritime Publish-Subscribe Networks
- 10/2023: We received a new DOE grant on Ruggedized Mobile Fast Charger for Off-Road Vehicles. Thank you DOE!
- 09/2023: Mohamad Chehade joined our group from American University of Beirut (AUB). Welcome Mohamad!
- 08/2023: Hao was selected as a member of the inaugural cohort of the UT Research Leaders Academy.
- 07/2023: We received a new grant from Army Research Office (ARO) to design safe reinforcement learning algorithms for networked systems. Thank you ARO!
- 05/2023: Our university-led consortium on industry decarbonization was funded by DOE.
- 09/2022: I’m now an Associate Professor.
- 08/2022: Young-ho Cho joined our group from Konkuk University. Welcome Young-ho!
- 01/2022: Our paper on Scalable Learning for Optimal Load Shedding Under Power Grid Emergency Operations has been accepted by IEEE PES General Meeting. Congrats Yuqi and Park!
- 01/2022: Our paper on Inferring power system dynamics from synchrophasor data using Gaussian processes has been accepted by IEEE TPWRS. This is a collaborative work led by Prof. Kekatos’ group at VT.
- 11/2021: Shanny presented her paper on Data-driven Modeling for Distribution Grids Under Partial Observability at the 2021 NAPS symposium.
- 08/2021: We have two new preprints: Reinforcement Learning Based Optimal Battery Control Under Cycle-based Degradation Cost and Data-driven Modeling for Distribution Grids Under Partial Observability
- 08/2021: Our new grant Learning-Enabled Modeling, Monitoring, and Decision Making for Distribution Grids has been awarded by NSF ECCS program. Thanks NSF!
- 08/2021: Our paper on Enhancing the Spatio-temporal Observability of Grid-Edge Resources in Distribution Grids has been accepted by TSG. Congrats Shanny!
- 08/2021: Our paper on Inferring power system frequency oscillations using Gaussian processes has been accepted by IEEE CDC. This is a collaborative work led by Prof. Kekatos’ group at VT.
- 07/2021: Hao presented a PSERC summer tutorial on Physics- and Risk-aware Machine Learning for Power System Operations.
- 06/2021: Shaohui’s paper on Graph Neural Networks for Learning Real-Time Prices in Electricity Market is accepted by 2021 ICML Workshop on Climate Change. [Arxiv]
- 05/2021: Revised the UG/Grad course on “Data Analytics in Power Systems” at UT [Lecture notes]
- 02/2021: Presented a talk on 2021 Texas Blackout: Facts and Initial Thoughts to UT-Austin students. Recording/slides available.
- 01/2021: Yuqi’s paper on Substation-Level Grid Topology Optimization Using Bus Splitting is accepted to 2021 ACC.
- 11/2020: Hao presented a talk on Spatio-Temporal Learning for Enhancing the Situational Awareness of Power Grids, at the webinar series organized by the IEEE Big Data Analytics subcommittee.
- 10/2020: New manuscript with Yuqi: Efficient Identification of Bus Split Events Using Synchrophasor Data.
- 09/2020: Hao is invited to participate in NAE’s 2020 US Frontiers of Engineering Symposium.
- 07/2020: Our NSF-SCC planning grant ECET: Empowering Community-centric Electrified Transportation has been awarded. Looking forward to working with our UT Architecture and LBJ colleagues on this project. Thank you NSF.
- 02/2020: Hao is part of the EPRI GREAT with Data team funded by DOE to develop a new digital power systems course.
- 01/2020: Hao is part of the organizing committee for an NSF workshop on Machine Learning and Data Science for Power Systems. [link]
- 01/2020: Yuqi’s paper on topology control under uncertainty is accepted to 2020 IEEE PES General Meeting. [Arxiv]
- 10/2019: We have one invited presentation on real-time transmission topology control under uncertainty (with Yuqi and Dr. Grani Hanasusanto) at INFORMS.
- 10/2019: Yuqi received the best student paper award (1st place) and best elevator pitch presentation (2nd place) from NAPS at Wichita State. Congrats Yuqi!
- 08/2019: Kyung-bin Kwon and Shaohui Liu are joining UT this year. Welcome!
- 06/2019: Participated in the UT Women in Engineering Program (WEP) summer camps along with Shanny. Gave a talk to junior high school girls on “the power grid #apagon” using the slides here.
- 06/2019: New manuscript (with Kaiqing, Alec, and Tamer): Global Convergence of Policy Gradient Methods to (Almost) Locally Optimal Policies . Earlier conference version to be presented at CDC 2019.
- 06/2019: New manuscript (with Yu): Fast Nonconvex SDP Solvers for Large-scale Power System State Estimation
- 06/2019: New accepted paper (with Yi and others): Optimal Blocking Device Placement for Geomagnetic Disturbance Mitigation.
- 06/2019: Review book chapter (with Chen at Argonne): A Sparse Representation Approach for Power System Anomaly Identication Using Synchrophasor Data
- 06/2019: I’m honored to receive the IEEE PES Austin Chapter Outstanding Engineer Award (OEA).
- 05/2019: Presented tutorial ‘”data-driven grid dynamics modeling using ambient synchrophasor data” at the IEEE Intl. Conf. on Smart Grid Synchronized Measurements and Analytics (SGSMA), College Station, TX.
- 04/2019: New paper (with Lin-yu, Max, Dr. Chu): Intrusion Detection in Distributed Frequency Control of Isolated Microgrids, appeared on IEEE Trans. Smart Grid
- 04/2019: I’m giving a talk on data-driven grid dynamics modeling using PMU data at the upcoming NREL Autonomous Grid Workshop.
- 02/2019: Shanny and I have participated in the UT-ECE Edison Lecture Series. Check out our poster on “The Power Grid”.
- 01/2019: I’m teaching a new grad-level course on “Data Analytics in Power Systems” at UT [Syllabus] [Lecture notes]
- 01/2019: Please find the teaching material (slides/notes) for my course on “Power Distribution System Analysis” that I developed in 2016.
- New manuscript (with Jianhan Emiliano, and Andrea): Dynamic Distribution State Estimation Using Synchrophasor Data
- New paper (with Hafez and Nikos): Optimal Power Flow with Step-Voltage Regulators in Multi-Phase Distribution Networks, accepted by IEEE Trans. Power Systems. Earlier conference version appeared in PSCC 2018.
- New paper (with Kaiqing, Alec, and Tamer): Projected Stochastic Primal-Dual Method for Constrained Online Learning with Kernels, accepted by IEEE Trans. Signal Processing
- New paper (with Gang Wang and Georgios Giannakis) on “Robust State Estimation from Rank-One Measurements” has been accepted by IEEE Trans. Control of Network Systems.
- Shanny Lin and Yuqi Zhou joined UT. Welcome!