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

Contact Information (Join us! I am recruiting multiple fully-funded PhD positions for 2023! For more information and project descriptions here.)

• Email: malmassa@uvm.edu
• 301b Votey Hall
  33 Colchester Avenue
  Burlington, VT, 05405 USA

Brief Biography

Mads Rønne Almassalkhi is the L. Richard Fisher Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Vermont and is co-founder of clean-tech startup, Packetized Energy, that is commercializing technology related to his research and was recently acquired by EnergyHub. His research interests lie at the intersection of power/energy systems, mathematical optimization, and control systems and focus on developing scalable algorithms that improve responsiveness and resilience of energy and power systems with a recent focus on advanced distribution system operations. He currently serves as Associate Editor at IEEE Transactions on Power Systems and was the previous Chair of the IEEE PES Smart Buildings, Loads, and Customer Systems (SBLC) technical subcommittee on Loads. His work has been highlighted by IEEE Spectrum Magazine in 2022 and recognized with a recent NSF CAREER award in 2021 and the Outstanding Junior Faculty award in his college in 2016. He holds a joint appointment as Chief Scientist in PNNL’s Optimization & Control Group and was Otto Mønsted Visiting Professor at DTU Wind & Energy Systems (WES) in Denmark in 2021-22. Prior to joining the University of Vermont, he was lead systems engineer at energy startup company Root3 Technologies in Chicago, IL. Before that, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in Electrical Engineering (EE): Systems in 2013 and a dual major in Electrical Engineering and Applied Mathematics at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio in 2008. When he is not working on energy problems or teaching, he spends his time with his amazing wife and their three wonderful children.

Research Interests

In the CORE Systems Lab, our goal is to advance our fundamental understanding of how power and energy systems can actively and reliably respond to changing market and grid conditions and enable a clean energy future. Towards this objective, our group seeks to develop impactful grid-aware control and optimization algorithms that coordinate distributed, networked grid and energy resources. Our group's work, thus, investigates modeling and control of fleets of distributed energy resources (DERs) as virtual energy storage (VES), optimization of DERs in transmission and distribution systems, and real-time validation of algorithms in a practical context.

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, 2023: Research: had fun presenting my first (remote) keynote at International Conference on Sustainable Technology and Advanced Computing in Electrical Engineering (ICSTATE and slides).
• January, 2023: Students: Welcome to CORE Systems Lab, Emily and Kendall!
• January, 2023: Moved office: I am now in Votey Hall 301b!
• December, 2022: Research: presented Sam and my optimal Kron-based reduction of networks or Opti-KRON in Cancun, Mexico, at (CDC 2022 and slides).
• August, 2022: Welcome to Mr. Mazen Elsaadany, who joins CORE Systems Lab from University of Sharjeh, UAE
• August, 2022: Back from sabbatical after a fabulous year at DTU Elektro/WES as guest professor!
• June, 2022: Outreach: co-organized another succesful webinar with Team Denmark-USA on system integration of renewables
• May, 2022: New project: excited kick off new DOE project (MAPLELEAF) with PNNL and VELCO as Co-PI on grid reliability/resilience with responsive loads.
• February, 2022: Media: thanks to IEEE Spectrum for sharing our story and proud of being part of the team that brought packetized energy management to life: IEEE Spectrum article
• February, 2022: Outreach: co-organized succesful webinar with Team Denmark-USA on flexibility, T&D market interfaces, and energy innovation: link to webinar/slides coming soon.
• February, 2022: New project: excited to have been awarded the Gund Catalyst award with PI Prof. Bindu Panikkar on how communities in rural Alaska are transitioning to clean energy. See presser here .