Recent events: 2025 INFORMS, 2025 NAPS, and 2026 ICERM Workshop

2025 INFORMS Annual Meeting

I gave a talk: "Embedding Affordability Goals into Grid Planning via Differentiable Optimization", at the 2025 INFORMS Annual Meeting in Atlanta, GA, as a part of Rabab's Invited Session, Algorithmic approaches to access and affordability in power systems optimization. This talk covered new directions from our recent work on using differentiable optimization to incorporate affordability considerations into electric grid planning. It was a great opportunity to engage with the operations research community and discuss how these methods can help create more equitable energy systems.

2025 North American Power Symposium (NAPS) Conference

My Presentation: "VArsity: Can Large Language Models Keep Power Engineering Students in Phase?"

I presented our recent paper: "VArsity: Can Large Language Models Keep Power Engineering Students in Phase?" at the 2025 North American Power Symposium (NAPS) Conference in Hartford, CT, as part of Paper Session 3D: Power System Education and Workforce Development. This talk covered our experiences deploying large language models in power engineering classrooms at Georgia Tech, and how they might impact the future of power engineering education.

Betelihem's Presentation: "Covert Distribution Load Tripping Attacks"

Additionally, I want to highlight the work of my amazing colleague Betelihem Ashebo, who presented her paper: "Covert Distribution Load Tripping Attacks" as part of Paper Session 5H: Distributed Energy Resources Modeling and Microgrid Operation V. Betelihem's talk explored how adversaries might be able to exploit vulnerabilities in direct load control (DLC) systems to cause disruptions in distribution networks.

2026 ICERM Randomized Numerical Linear Algebra Workshop

I attended the 2026 ICERM Randomized Numerical Linear Algebra Workshop in Providence, RI (Feb. 2-6, 2026) and presented a poster: "Randomness as a Resource for Electric Power Systems." It was a fantastic opportunity to engage with the randomized numerical linear algebra community and discuss new directions for applying these techniques to problems in infrastructure systems.