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.

I am looking forward to spending some time as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, working with Le Xie, Na Li, and the Power and AI Initiative.