Haoruo Zhao, a PhD student in Operations Research at the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) at Georgia Tech, defended her dissertation titled "Advances in Large-Scale Security-Constrained Economic Dispatch: Loss Modeling, Stochastic Dispatch, and Proxy Verification." The defense took place at 1 p.m. in the Coda Building in Midtown Atlanta before a distinguished committee of academic and industry experts.

Zhao’s Research

Zhao’s research addresses Security-Constrained Economic Dispatch (SCED), a core operational challenge for power grid operators who must meet electricity demand at minimal cost while ensuring system reliability. Her dissertation introduces innovations that enhance the efficiency and accuracy of this process. These include a new linear model that simplifies the modeling of energy losses in large-scale power systems, a real-time dispatch framework that accounts for uncertainty in electricity markets, and novel optimization techniques for verifying the reliability of artificial intelligence used in grid operations.

The work also presents a compact method to validate proxy models—simplified representations used to make faster decisions—ensuring they remain close to optimal solutions. By blending advanced optimization with practical energy applications, Zhao’s research provides new tools for addressing the computational challenges of modern electricity systems, particularly as renewable energy integration increases system complexity.

A Cross-Disciplinary Committee

Zhao’s committee included her advisor, Dr. Pascal Van Hentenryck, along with Dr. Constance Crozier, Dr. Mathieu Dahan, Dr. Daniel Molzahn, and Dr. Hassan Hijazi of Gurobi. Her contributions reflect AI4OPT’s continued leadership in solving high-impact, data-driven infrastructure problems through interdisciplinary research and innovation.