Kevin Wu, a third-year Ph.D. student in operations research at Georgia Tech, has been awarded the Anderson-Interface Research Award. The award recognizes Kevin's impactful research on decarbonizing the U.S. electric power grid by optimizing energy infrastructure investments and integrating renewable energy resources. The Anderson-Interface Research Award is awarded to one student annually who demonstrates exceptional promise in research with the potential to address critical societal challenges.

Transforming Energy Infrastructure

Kevin’s doctoral research addresses a critical challenge in energy sustainability: planning the expansion of the power grid to accommodate soaring renewable energy generation and utility-scale energy storage. The transition to a carbon-neutral future necessitates efficient investments in infrastructure like transmission power lines and large-scale batteries. To tackle these challenges, Kevin develops solution algorithms for the Transmission Network Expansion Planning (TNEP) problem, a large-scale planning problem that identifies, over a multi-decade horizon, which infrastructure to build, where, and when. 

In his recent paper, Strong Mixed-Integer Formulations for Transmission Planning with FACTS Devices, Kevin introduced a class of facet-defining inequalities that significantly improve the computational efficiency of solving the TNEP problem. His approach achieved a 75% reduction in computing time, advancing the practical application of these models. Currently, Kevin is extending this framework to incorporate utility-scale energy storage resources.

Bridging Research and Innovation

Kevin earned an undergraduate degree in computer science and mathematics at Northwestern University before pursuing a Ph.D. in operations research. At Georgia Tech’s AI4OPT initiative, Kevin leverages his expertise to develop solutions for modernizing the power grid. His focus on emerging technologies like dynamic impedance devices and energy storage aligns with the pressing need to manage increasing energy demands while integrating renewables.