Samuel Talkington

Ph.D. Candidate, Georgia Institute of Technology

I am a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and I am fortunate to be advised by Daniel K. Molzahn.

My research develops efficient algorithms for societal-scale problems in electric power networks. At the interface of statistics and optimization, I exploit domain structure—such as power flow physics, spectral graph properties, and communication protocols—to improve scalability and reliability. My broader vision is to treat randomness as a resource to transform how the grid is operated, drawing on tools such as randomized numerical linear algebra.

I am privileged for my work to be supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (GRF), the NSF AI Institute for Advances in Optimization (AI4OPT), the Georgia Tech Supporting Teaching ExpERience (STEER) fellowship, Sandia National Laboratories, the Georgia Tech Strategic Energy Institute (SEI), the Energy Policy and Innovation Center (EPIcenter) at Georgia Tech, and the Georgia Tech Steve W. Chaddick and Szalm Fellowships in ECE.

email // scholar // github // in // orcid
Samuel Talkington headshot

Blog

Interactive Visualization: Randomized Switching for Network Reconfiguration
Linearizing the Power Flow Equations
Upcoming events: 2025 INFORMS Annual Meeting, 2025 NAPS Conference, and 2026 ICERM RandNLA Workshop
Harvard PAI Seminar: "Randomness as a Resource: Scalable Algorithms for Grid Decision-Making"

all posts


Recent Research

Error Bounds for Radial Network Topology Learning from Quantized Measurements
Samuel Talkington, Aditya Rangarajan, Pedro A. de Alcântara, Line Roald, Daniel K. Molzahn, and Daniel R. Fuhrmann
Efficient Network Reconfiguration by Randomized Switching
Samuel Talkington, Dmitrii M. Ostrovskii, and Daniel K. Molzahn
Covert Distribution Load Tripping Attacks
Betelihem Kebede Ashebo, Samuel Talkington, Saman Zonouz, and Daniel K. Molzahn
Admittance Matrix Concentration Inequalities for Understanding Uncertain Power Networks
Samuel Talkington, Cameron Khanpour, Rahul K. Gupta, Sergio A. Dorado-Rojas, Daniel Turizo, Hyeongon Park, Dmitrii M. Ostrovskii, and Daniel K. Molzahn
VArsity: Can Large Language Models Keep Power Engineering Students in Phase?
Samuel Talkington and Daniel K. Molzahn
Differentiating Through Power Flow Solutions for Admittance and Topology Control
Samuel Talkington, Daniel Turizo, Sergio A. Dorado-Rojas, Rahul K. Gupta, and Daniel K. Molzahn
Strategic Electric Distribution Network Sensing via Spectral Bandits
Samuel Talkington, Rahul Gupta, Richard Asiamah, Paprapee Buason, and Daniel K. Molzahn
Locational Marginal Burden: Quantifying the Equity of Optimal Power Flow Solutions
Samuel Talkington∗, Amanda West∗, and Rabab Haider (∗ equal contribution)

all papers