Po-Chen Chen

Dr. Po-Chen Chen is a business, transformation, and analytics leader specializing in R&D and strategy implementation to drive data-driven cultures and innovative solutions. His expertise bridges advanced technology and power systems, with focus areas including agentic artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), generative AI (GenAI), computer vision, cloud infrastructure, and big data applications tailored for the utility sector. His deep power system background encompasses grid edge analytics, advanced metering infrastructure (AMI 2.0), real-time load forecasting, protection and control, voltage stability, GIS/geospatial coding, vegetation management, outage restoration, and distributed energy resource (DER) and EV adoption. 

Currently serving as the Consulting Director for the Data, Analytics, and AI Practice at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Dr. Chen has a proven track record of deploying analytics-based solutions that enhance customer experience, improve operating performance, and increase safety. Previously, as a Data Science Manager within Exelon's Infrastructure and Safety Analytics team, he collaborated with internal stakeholders and external partners to translate complex business needs into deployed solutions. His prior leadership roles include driving agile product development for predictive outage detection at Sentient Energy; leading a data science team at Duke Energy to build AWS-based behavioral demand response and winter peak models; and architecting HDFS/data lake ecosystems and AI solutions on Spark-Hadoop and GPU platforms for Oncor Electric Delivery. 

An award-winning expert in grid operations and AI integration, Dr. Chen's career is marked by prestigious industry recognition. He is a consecutive recipient of the Association of Edison Illuminating Companies (AEIC) Achievement Award, honored in 2024 for his work with synthetic image data for asset inspection, following a 2023 award for spatiotemporal outage pinpointing analytics. At Exelon in 2023, he led initiatives that secured the Grand Prize for the Department of Energy Digitizing Utility Grant (Electrify USA) for EV integration. His tenure also yielded the Public Utilities Fortnightly Charles Steinmetz Top Innovator Award for an automated drone initiative, and the IEEE Educational Activities Board (EAB) Employer Professional Development Award. Furthermore, his deep commitment to the analytics community resulted in three 2023 Utility Analytics Institute (UAI) honors: the Top 25 Thought Leaders Award, the Most Engaged Utility Member Award, and the July Feature Award. 

A dedicated voice in the industry, Dr. Chen serves in leadership positions across various organizations, including the UAI, the AEIC Data Analytics Council, the DistribuTech Advisory Committee, the IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES) Subcommittee on Big Data & Analytics, and International Council on Large Electric Systems (CIGRE) Working Groups. 

Dr. Chen's academic contributions include 21 conference proceedings, 6 journal articles, and 1 book chapter. Recognized as an elite reviewer for more than 16 journals, he has received four exceptional reviewer awards from IEEE Transactions societies.