Welcome to the Control and Optimization of Renewable Energy (CORE) Systems Lab at the University of Vermont!

Contact Information

• Email:: malmassa@uvm.edu
• Address:
  Billings 156B
  48 University Place
  Burlington, VT 05405 United States

Brief Biography

Mads R. Almassalkhi is the L. Richard Fisher Associate Professor at the University of Vermont. His research focuses on engineering flexibility in power and energy systems to enhance resilience and optimize grid utilization, spanning advanced distribution and transmission system operations; modeling, control, and optimization of distributed energy resources (DERs) for grid-aware coordination; and battery energy storage systems. He is the founding Director of UVM’s newest center on energy and autonomy, CREATE. His work has been featured in IEEE Power & Energy Magazine and IEEE Spectrum, and he is the recipient of an NSF CAREER Award (2021), the Otto Mønsted Visiting Professorship at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) in 2022, and recognition as a 2022 Copenhagen Goodwill Ambassador (co-recipient) by Copenhagen Capacity for inspiring constructive dialogue on immigration reform. He also holds a joint appointment at PNNL as Chief Scientist and currently works with NYSERDA as Grid Architect to help design, plan, and realize New York’s vision for a Grid of the Future. Previously, he was a co-founder of Packetized Energy, a clean-tech startup acquired by EnergyHub in 2022, and earlier served as Lead Engineer at Root3 Technologies in Chicago, IL. He earned his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering Systems from the University of Michigan in 2013 and a dual B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Applied Mathematics from the University of Cincinnati in 2008. When not working on energy riddles or teaching, he enjoys spending time with his wife and their three wonderful children.

Research Interests

At the CORE Systems Lab, we are dedicated to improving our fundamental understanding of power and energy systems. Our mission is to ensure these systems can adapt to ever-changing market and grid conditions, paving the way for large-scale renewable energy integration — crucial for combating climate change. We're at the forefront of creating advanced control and optimization algorithms that coordinate and orchestrate distributed energy resources (DERs). Our research delves deep into modeling fleets of DERs as virtual power plants (VPPs) and virtual energy storage (VES). We also study optimization of DERs across transmission and distribution systems and validate our algorithms with testing in real-world scenarios.

Education

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA:

• Ph.D. Electrical Engineering: Systems (2013)
• M.S.E. Electrical Engineering: Systems (2010)

University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA:

• B.S. in Electrical Engineering with dual major in Applied Mathematics (2008)

Recent News

• January, 2026: I am on the organizing committee for a new power systems conference, PowerUp! Please consider submitting a paper or poster, or attending the conference in Boulder, Colorado in September, 2026!
• 2023-2025: So much happened, I will update website soon. Lesson: perpetually update CV and website, so it does not become a mountain of effort.
• September, 2023: So glad to see our new paper with Soumya Kundu out that comments on the role of intelligent electrification in enabling renewable generation: Springer link
• September, 2023: Welcome to newly minted Dr. Dakota Hamilton, who joins us from Purdue University as a Post-doctoral Associate on our new Energyshed project!
• August, 2023: Welcome to all the new Ph.D. student in power/energy at UVM! Looking forward to work closely with Eric, Beyzanur, Omid, and Arash.
• August, 2023: Honored to present our group's work to the Power Systems Laboratory (PSL) at ETH Zürich: (talk info and slides).
• July, 2023: Paper accepted! Congrats to Mazen for having our IEEE CDC paper accepted on battery optimization and analysis. See you in Singapore!
• June, 2023: Kicked off a new 4-year DOE Hybrid Energy Systems (HES) project that seeks to co-optimize electro-thermal performance of hybrid solar PV, battery, and electrolyzer systems in northern climates.