Cong Chen

Overview

My research aims to drive the global energy transition through principled engineering solutions rooted in optimization, economics, and modern machine learning/AI principles. In particular, I have focused on incentivizing renewable energy adoption in power systems, including large-scale distributed energy resource aggregation, pricing under uncertainties, energy storage integration in the electricity market, and hydrogen in power systems. I completed my PhD in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University, supervised by Professor Lang Tong. I am currently an Energy Fellow in the Stanford Graduate School of Business, working with professors Kuang Xu, Omer Karaduman, and Itai Ashlagi. I will join Dartmouth as an assistant professor of engineering in Fall 2025 and am looking for students or postdocs to join my research group. Interested applicants are encouraged to contact me at chen.cong@dartmouth.edu.

Research Interests

Power systems engineering; optimization theory; power systems economics; and electricity markets

Education

• BE, Electrical Engineering, Wuhan University 2017
• MS, Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University 2019
  
• PhD, Electrical Engineering (major); Operations Research and Data Science (minor), Cornell University 2024

Awards

• Best Paper Award, IEEE Power & Energy Society General Meeting (PESGM), 2024 & 2019
• Stanford Energy Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2024
• Cornell ECE Outstanding PhD Thesis Award, 2024
• Prize Conference Paper Award, IEEE PESGM, 2023
• Engineering and Applied Science Trailblazing Young Researcher, Caltech, 2023
• Irwin and Joan Jacobs Scholar, Cornell University, 2019
• Outstanding Graduate Student & Thesis Award, Tsinghua University, 2019
• Outstanding Undergraduate Student & Thesis Award, Wuhan University, 2017

Professional Activities

• Journal Reviewer: IEEE Transactions on Power Systems; IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid; IEEE Transactions on Energy Markets, Policy, and Regulation; IEEE Power Engineering Letters; Electric Power Systems Research; Elsevier Journal on Applied Energy; IET Renewable Power Generation; IEEE Power and Energy Technology Systems Journal
• Conference Reviewer: Power Systems Computation Conference (PSCC); IEEE Power Energy Society General Meeting (PESGM); IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC); Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS); IEEE Conference on Energy Internet and Energy System Integration (EI2); IEEE Texas Power and Energy Conference (TPEC)
• Conference Panel Co-Host: IEEE PES Grid Edge Technologies Conference & Exposition
• Member, IEEE Task Force on Hydrogen Integration and PSOPE—Power System Economics (Jul. 2023 – ongoing)
• Mentor, Athena Talaria Research (Jul. 2021 – Aug. 2021)
• Buddy, Expanding Your Horizons, Cornell University (2022, 2023 & 2024)
• Chairwoman, Enactus, Wuhan University (May 2015 – May 2016): Led a team of 70+ members running 6 welfare entrepreneurship projects. Won the 2016 Golden Prize in the "Chuang Qing Chun" Entrepreneurship project competition (the most influential Entrepreneurship project competition in China)

Selected Publications

• C. Chen, S. Bose, T. Mount, and L. Tong, "Wholesale Market Participation of DERA: DSO-DERA-ISO Coordination," IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, 2024.
  
• C. Chen, and L. Tong, "Convexifying Market Clearing of SoC-Dependent Bids From Merchant Storage Participants," IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, vol. 38, no. 3, pp. 2955–2957, May 2023.
• C. Chen, and L. Tong, "Pricing Real-Time Stochastic Storage Operations," Electric Power Systems Research, vol. 212, pp. 108606, 2022.
• Y. Guo, C. Chen, and L. Tong, "Pricing Multi-Interval Dispatch under Uncertainty Part I: Dispatch-Following Incentives," IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, vol. 36, no. 5, pp. 3865–3877, Sept. 2021.
• C. Chen, Y. Guo, and L. Tong, "Pricing Multi-Interval Dispatch under Uncertainty Part II: Generalization and Performance," IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, vol. 36, no. 5, pp. 3878–3886, Sept. 2021.
• S. Li, C. Chen, and L. Tong, "Convexifying Regulation Market Clearing of State-of-Charge Dependent Bid," Proc. of IEEE Power & Energy Society General Meeting, 2024. (in Best Paper Session)
• C. Chen, S. Bose, and L. Tong, "DSO-DERA Coordination for the Wholesale Market Participation of Distributed Energy Resources," Proc. of IEEE Power & Energy Society General Meeting, 2023. (IEEE Prize Conference Paper Award)
• C. Chen, X. Shen, Q. Guo, H. Sun, and S. Mohammed, "Adaptive Robust Planning-Operation Co-optimization of Energy Hubs with Modified Column-and-Constraint Generation Algorithm," Proc. of IEEE Power & Energy Society General Meeting, 2019. (in Best Paper Session)

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