Speakers

David Wenzhong Gao

Professor, Department Chair, IEEE Fellow
University of Denver, USA

David Wenzhong Gao received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and computer engineering, specializing in electric power engineering, from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA, in 1999 and 2002, respectively.
He is a Full Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Director of Renewable Energy and Power Electronics Laboratory at the University of Denver, Denver, CO, USA. He teaches courses such as Renewable and Efficient Power and Energy Systems, Power Generation, Operation and Control, Power System Protection. He has conducted extensive research in areas of power and energy systems including renewable energies, microgrids, distributed generation, smart grid, power delivery, power electronics application, power system protection, power system restructuring, and hybrid electric vehicles. He has published more than one hundred fifty refereed technical papers in international journals and conferences. He has co-authored a book entitled “Modern Hybrid Electric Vehicles,” published by John Wiley & Sons in United Kingdom. His research has been funded by many funding agencies and sponsors including US National Science Foundation, US Department of Energy, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, US Army Research Office, US Office of Naval Research, Tennessee Valley Authority, US Electric Power Research Institute. In 2009, he won the prestigious US National Science Foundation CAREER award for wind power research. He received the Best Paper Award in the Complex Systems Track at the 2002 Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), Jan. 2002. Since June 2003, Dr. Gao has been a Senior Member of the IEEE till 2021 when he was named a Fellow of IEEE.
Dr. Gao currently serves as an Editor for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, an Associate Editor for the IEEE JOURNAL OF EMERGING AND SELECTED TOPICS IN POWER ELECTRONICS, and he has been an active Reviewer of leading journals and conferences such as the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID, the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENERGY CONVERSION, the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, the IET RENEWABLE POWER GENERATION, the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS; IEEE Vehicular Power and Propulsion Conference (VPPC), IEEE Power and Energy Society General Meeting. He currently serves as the Secretary of IEEE Power Electronics Society Denver Section. He has been active in various technical committees of IEEE societies and conference organizing committees. He is a member of the Power and Energy Education Committee (PEEC) of IEEE PES (Power and Energy Society). He served as General Chair to host 2012 IEEE Symposium on Power Electronics and Machines in Wind Applications (PEMWA) in Denver, CO, USA. He was a Technical Co-chair for IEEE Vehicular Power and Propulsion Conference, held in Dearborn, MI, USA, September 7-11, 2009. He was also a Technical Program Co-chair in the Organizing Committee of 2013 IEEE GreenTech Conference held in Denver, April 2013. He will serve as the General Chair to host North American Power Symposium (NAPS 2016), September 18-20, 2016, Denver, USA. Dr. Gao has been invited to serve on the grant review panel for many funding agencies including the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Xiangjun Li

Professor, IET Fellow, CAA Fellow

China Electric Power Research Institute, China

Xiangjun Li (M’06–SM’12) received the Ph.D. degrees in electrical and electronic engineering from the Kitami Institute of Technology (KIT), Kitami, Japan, in March 2006. He is the Director of Energy Storage System Integration and Configuration Technology Research Lab. Energy Storage and Electrotechnics Dept. at the China Electric Power Research Institute, Since Jun. 2019-now. He is a Fellow of IET, chartered engineer of UK, and is one of the senior members of CSEE, CAS, and CES, etc. Prior to join the China Electric Power Research Institute in Mar. 2010, he was the Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Assistant Research Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, (2008.1–2010.3), the Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER), Daejeon, Korea (2006.5–2007.12), respectively. His current research interests include the topic of digital intelligence/ planning configuration/ integration/ SCADA/ operation control/ application technologies for energy storage system/stations, distributed generation systems, electric vehicle, and micro-grids. He has published over 150 technical papers, over 120 patents, and 6 books. He was the recipient of the Advanced Individual in Science and Technology Work Award of State Grid Corporation of China, the CSEE China Electric Power Excellent Scientific and Technological Worker Award, First Batch Excellent Individuals in the Energy Storage Field of China-EU Energy Technology Innovation Cooperation, National Energy Administration of China, and IEEE PES China Satellite Technology Committee Distinguished Individual Contribution Award.                                                                                                                                         

Zhuoli Zhao

Associate Professor, Senior Member, IEEE/ IEEE PES/ IEEE SA

Guangdong University of Technology, China

Zhuoli Zhao is an Associate Professor, Master Supervisor and "Youth Hundred Talents Program" talent of the School of Automation, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, China. His research interests include microgrid control and energy management, renewable power generation control and grid-connected operation, modeling, analysis and control of power-electronized power systems and smart grids. He has comprehensive knowledge and a wealth of major engineering projects running and debugging hands-on experience in the above fields.

He leads a variety of projects in the field of new energy and microgrid, including the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Guangdong Province-Guangxi Province Joint Foundation, and the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province. As a core researcher, he has participated in a number of national major science and technology projects in the field of new energy and microgrids, including the National High Technology Research and Development Program, National Science and Technology Support Program and the National Key Research and Development Program of China. The smart microgrid control devices he participated in research and development have been popularized and applied in many domestic demonstration projects. The scientific and technological achievements of "Key Technologies and Applications of Energy Power Conversion, Energy Management, and Collaborative Control" he participated in have been applied in Hainan Province Power Grid. He won the first prize of Guangdong Electric Power Science and Technology Award and the third prize of China Electric Power Science and Technology Progress Award. In recent years, he has published more than 50 papers in authoritative journals and conferences such as IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, etc. He holds more than 10 authorized invention patents. He participated in the completion of three national power industry standards and central enterprise standards in the direction of microgrids and active power control technology for wind farms. He is an Associate Editor for Protection and Control of Modern Power Systems. He serves as a Reviewer for more than ten authoritative journals in the electrical field, including the IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, the IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy, the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, the IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, the Applied Energy, etc.