Fangxing (Fran) Li

CURENT Director and John W. Fisher Professor

Professor Fran Li has been the Director of CURENT since 2024. He is currently the John W. Fisher Professor (formerly James W. McConnell Professor), a position he has held since 2017, in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at the University of Tennessee. He is also an adjunct researcher at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). He is a Fellow of IEEE (Class of 2017), a Fellow of IET (2011), a registered Professional Engineer (P.E.) in the state of North Carolina, and a Member of Sigma Xi – The Scientific Research Society. He is the Founding Chair of IEEE AI for Power Systems Coordinating Committee (since 2026). Also, he served as the Chair (2020-2021) and Vice Chair (2016-2019) of IEEE Power System Operation, Planning and Economics (PSOPE) committee, and the Editor-In-Chief of IEEE Open Access Journal of Power and Energy (OAJPE) from 2020 to 2025.

Prof. Li has received numerous awards and honors including a R&D 100 Award in 2020, IEEE PES Technical Committee Prize Paper award three times in 2019, 2024 and 2026, 6 Best Paper awards at international journals, and 7 Best Papers/Posters at international conferences.

Dr. Li received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Southeast University in Nanjing, China University in 1994 and 1997 respectively. In 2001, he received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech. He has been a faculty member at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville since August 2005.

His current research interests include grid resilience, electricity markets, and AI for power systems.

Research Fact Sheet

Contact Info

E-mail Address:
fli6@utk.edu
Links:
http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~fli6/
Mailing Address:
512 Min H. Kao Building
The University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN 37996-2250
Telephone Numbers:
Office (voice): (865) 974-8401
Office (fax): (865) 974-5483