On April 13, the Power and Energy Society (PES), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) announced the list of winners of the first Ph.D. Dissertation Competition at the Conference and Exposition of Grid Edge Technologies held in San Diego, USA. Xu Luo, a Ph.D. graduated from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Applied Electronics (EEA) at Tsinghua University, won the Best Research Award and a prize of USD 5,000, becoming one of the two global winners.

Award ceremony at the conference (Xu Luo, fourth from the left)

The Ph.D. Dissertation Challenge, toward universities from around the world, requires participants to present their research results in the form of a speech at the Grid Edge Conference & Exposition. 50 finalists from hundreds of applicants around the world, who come from 38 universities in 13 countries, including world-renowned universities and colleges in the field of electric power and energy such as Harvard University, Stanford University, Princeton University, Imperial College London, Aalborg University in Denmark, University of Melbourne in Australia, and KU Leuven in Belgium, were enrolled. After on-site presentation and evaluation, two winners of the “Best Research Award” and two winners of the “Best Presentation Award” were selected. XU Luo is the only doctoral graduate from a Chinese university among the winners.

Xu Luo gave a speech at the closing ceremony of the conference to express her gratitude for winning the award

As one of the world’s largest professional organizations for electricity and energy, the IEEE Power and Energy Society has over 40,000 members in more than 150 countries and regions around the world. The association has 17 technical committees and 4 coordinating committees, dedicated to promoting technological innovation in the power industry, formulating industry standards, and leading the development of the power industry. In addition, several journals under the IEEE Power and Energy Society have extremely high academic influence in the fields of power systems, smart grids, and renewable energies.

Xu Luo and Professor Guo Qinglai

Xu Luo is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University. During his study for Ph.D., he studied under Professor Guo Qinglai in EEA. The title of his speech is “Cyber-Physical Systems: Modeling, Resilience and Stability”. He has also just won the CIGRE Thesis Award. Another winner of the Best Research Award is Dr. Chen Xin from Harvard University, who is also an alumnus of EEA. She graduated with a master’s degree from Tsinghua University in 2017, and her master’s supervisor was Professor Wu Wenchuan from EEA.

Xu Luo, male, a Ph.D. graduated from Tsinghua University in 2022, is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Environmental Engineering at Princeton University in the United States, mainly engaged in interdisciplinary research on extreme climate and digital power system resilience. His part-time academic activities include being a member of the IEEE PES Energy Internet Coordination Committee, secretary of the CIGRE D2.56 Cyber-physical System Working Group, member of the IEEE PES Cyber-physical System Working Group, junior editor of the internationally renowned journal Applied Energy, and reviewer for more than ten internationally renowned journals. He received the honor of CIGRE Thesis Award, Outstanding Reviewer of IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, Best Paper Award of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) in 2019, and Best Paper Award of the IEEE Energy Internet and Energy System Integration Conference. He published more than ten papers in top journals such as IEEE TSG/RSER/APEN, and was granted three Chinese invention patents and one US invention patent. He has received awards when studying in Tsinghua University, including the National Scholarship for Ph.D. students and the Social Practice Scholarship for Graduate Students at Tsinghua University. As a member of the badminton team of Tsinghua University, he played for the university and won third place in mixed doubles and fifth place in team competition at the Capital University Badminton Championship.