Mads Rønne Almassalkhi

Mads Rønne Almassalkhi is the L. Richard Fisher Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Vermont (UVM), where he co-directs CREATE, the Center for Resilient Energy and Autonomous Technologies in Engineering. He also holds a joint appointment as Chief Scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in the Optimization & Control Group and collaborates with NYSERDA to support New York’s Department of Public Service Grid of the Future (GOTF) proceedings. His research lies at the intersection of power and energy systems, optimization, and control theory, with a focus on developing scalable algorithms and architectures to enhance grid resilience, flexibility, and decarbonization.

Almassalkhi has been recognized with an NSF CAREER Award (2021) and the Outstanding Junior Faculty Award in UVM’s College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences (2016). His work has been featured in IEEE Spectrum Magazine and on the Just Have a Think YouTube channel, and is supported through collaborations with DOE, utilities, and industry partners. He currently serves as Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Power Systems and as Chair of the IEEE Control Systems Society Technical Committee on Energy Systems. He co-founded Packetized Energy, a clean-tech startup that commercialized technology from his research and was acquired by EnergyHub in 2022. He was Otto Mønsted Visiting Professor at DTU Wind & Energy Systems in Denmark (2021–22), strengthening international collaborations in clean energy research. Prior to joining UVM, he was Lead Systems Engineer at Root3 Technologies, a startup in Chicago, IL. He earned his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering (Systems) from the University of Michigan in 2013 and dual B.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Applied Mathematics from the University of Cincinnati in 2008. When not working on energy riddles or teaching, he enjoys spending time with his amazing wife and their three wonderful children in Vermont.