Mads Rønne Almassalkhi is an Associate Professor (from Fall 2021) in the Department of Electrical and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Vermont and Director of CORE (Control and Optimization of Renewable Energy) Systems Lab. He is also co-founder (and former CTO) of clean-tech startup Packetized Energy that is actively commercializing technology related to his research. Mads' research interests generally lie at the intersection of power systems, mathematical optimization, and control systems and focus on developing scalable algorithms that improve responsiveness and resilience of energy and power systems with a focus on advanced distribution system operations.
As director of the CORE Systems Lab, Mads' goal is to advance 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, the lab group seeks to develop impactful grid-aware control and optimization algorithms that coordinate distributed, networked grid and energy resources. Their 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.
Within IEEE, Mads serves as the Chair of the IEEE PES Smart Buildings, Loads, and Customer Systems (SBLC) technical subcommittee on Loads and hold a joint appointment as Chief Scientist at PNNL. His group’s work has been recognized with a recent NSF CAREER award in 2021 and the Outstanding Junior Faculty award in CEMS in 2016. Prior to joining the University of Vermont, Mads was lead systems engineer at energy startup company Root3 Technologies in Chicago, IL. Before that, he received his PhD 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 Mads is not working on energy problems or teaching, he spends his time with his amazing wife and their three wonderful children.
