SDSU engineer secures NSF CAREER Award to future-proof U.S. power grid
Tong Huang’s project aims to strengthen grid stability, expand access to advanced engineering education and help prepare the modern energy workforce.
As power grids grow more complex with the integration of heterogeneous energy resources and demands, ensuring stability and resilience has become an urgent challenge. Tong Huang, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at San Diego State University, is rising to meet the challenge.
In recognition of his work, Huang has received the U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the foundation’s most prestigious honor for early career faculty. The $550,000 award supports Huang’s research which focuses on ensuring the power grid remains stable and resilient as a mix of energy resources and loads are integrated, including wind, solar, battery storage and AI data centers alongside traditional power plants.
“Today’s power grid is a complex network of different energy conversion technologies,” Huang said. “Our goal is to create ‘distributed intelligence,’ essentially giving these technologies brains that can automatically and collaboratively detect instability and fix it before it leads to a blackout.”
His research introduces a “stability adaptor” that can self-check and self-enforce the compatibility of legacy and future energy resources to their host grids. This approach is enabled by physically rigorous model-based analysis and domain-tailored AI algorithms.
“This is a well-deserved recognition of Professor Huang’s outstanding work, dedication, and potential,” said Eugene Olevsky, dean of the College of Engineering. “It is also a significant achievement for his department, the College of Engineering, and San Diego State University.”
Beyond the lab, the award will fund a platform allowIng students and researchers across the nation to run advanced power simulations and hardware-in-the-loop tests remotely, breaking down the barriers to high-level engineering education. The project also includes development of a new course at SDSU and nationwide workshops, ensuring SDSU remains at the forefront of preparing the modern energy workforce.
"The project will bring transformative change in how to reliably operate electric power networks under extreme weather events, such as wildfire, and unexpected fluctuations of large generation and load, such as solar/wind farms and AI data centers,” said Huang. “We will develop novel interdisciplinary approaches in the intersection of power grids, control theory, and machine learning to address such a grand challenge."
In addition to this NSF CAREER Award, Huang, as lead principal investigator, received the highly competitive NSF ASCENT Award, valued at $1.5 million, to boost the cybersecurity of power grids.
"Professor Tong Huang's achievement demonstrates that his research vision is recognized as groundbreaking,” said Arif Ege Engin, professor and chair of SDSU’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “His innovative work on power grid infrastructure signals his potential as a leader in the next generation of electrical and computer engineering research and education.”
As the name suggests, the NSF CAREER award often provides the basis for an entire career of research. NSF records show 37 previous recipients at SDSU since 1997 (including one who was hired by SDSU from a different university after receiving the award).
