At the recent IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES) General Meeting 2025, held in Austin, TX from July 27–31, 2025, numerous CURENT faculty members, students, and alumni were recognized with prestigious awards and honors.
Society-Level Prize Paper Awards
Each year, PES selects only two society-level prize papers. In 2025, both awards were bestowed on papers with lead and major authors from CURENT members or former members:
- 2025 IEEE PES Prize Paper Award for “A Review of Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS) for Wildfire Mitigation: Policies, Practices, Models and Data Sources”, IEEE Transactions on Energy Markets, Policy and Regulation, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 187–197, Sept. 2023.
- Lead and corresponding author: Dr. Can Huang (former PhD student, 2012–2016)
- Co-authors: Dr. Qinran Hu (former PhD student, 2010-2015) and Dr. Bin Wang (former PhD student, 2012–2017)
- 2025 IEEE PES Prize Paper Award for “Methods for Analysis and Quantification of Power System Resilience”, IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, vol. 38, no. 5, pp. 4774–4786, Sept. 2023.
- Lead author: Dr. Alex Stankovic (CURENT Professor, 2011–2021, Tufts University)
- Co-authors: Dr. Kevin Tomsovic (CURENT Professor & Director, 2011–2024) and Dr. Joe Chow (CURENT Professor, 2011–2021, RPI)
Society-level Major Individual Honors
- Dr. Ali Abur (CURENT Professor, 2011–2021, Northeastern University) received the 2025 IEEE PES Charles Concordia Power Systems Engineering Award “for contributions to power system state and network model estimation.”
Additional Awards to CURENT Members
- 2024 PES Technical Committee Prize Paper Award for “Transmission-and-Distribution Dynamic Co-Simulation Framework for Distributed Energy Resource Frequency Response”, IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 482–495, Jan. 2022.
- Recipients: Dr. Xin Fang (former PhD student, 2012–2016), Dr. Hantao Cui (former PhD student, 2013–2018; Research Engineer, 2015–2021), and Dr. Fran Li (Professor & Director of CURENT)
- Best Conference Papers award at IEEE PES GM2025 for “Reduced-Order Phase-Amplitude Characterization of Nonlinear Subsynchronous Oscillations Involving Inverter-Based Resources”.
- Recipients: Kaiyang Huang (current PhD student), Dr. Tianwei Xia (former PhD student), and Dr. Kai Sun (CURENT Professor)
- IEEE PES Technical Committee WG Award on Outstanding Technical Report — awarded to Dr. Fran Li as Chapter Lead for “IEEE PES Technology Assessment and Roadmap.”
- IEEE PES Technical Council Outstanding Young Professionals Award — awarded to Dr. Jin Zhao (former Postdoctoral Research Associate, 2020–2022).
- Best Presentation at IEEE PES PCCC Student Network Session — awarded to Junjie Yin (current PhD student) for “Encoding Frequency Dynamics into Economic Operation of IBR-based Power System”, based on recent CURENT Large-scale Testbed (LTB) development.
These distinguished honors reaffirm CURENT’s leadership and excellence in electric power research, both in advancing technical innovation and in shaping the global research community.