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XING ("Crossing") seeks to create and innovate cross-disciplinary solutions for next-generation energy systems, overlapping meteorology, AI, machine learning, and cybersecurity to address compound real-world needs. Supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy, and industry, our mission is to bridge the gap between next-generation energy system research and state-of-the-art data science by utilizing diversified data from weather and renewable generation data, IoT devices, smart meters, inverters, and sensors, etc.
Regarding lab openings for fully-funded Ph.D. and visiting scholars in electrical engineering, see Position Opening.
Email: y.zhang AT okstate DOT edu Office:
217 Engineering South
Tel:
405-744-7111
ORCID:
0000-0003-4777-3433
Ying Zhang, Ph.D., SMIEEE
Jack H. Graham Endowed Fellow of Engineering
Assistant Professor, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Oklahoma State University
Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid
Associate Editor, IET Generation, Transmission & Distribution
Before joining OSU, Dr. Zhang was a postdoctoral research associate in the U.S. DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory with the Interdisciplinary Science Department and a Visiting Scholar at Cornell University. She received the Frederick E. Terman Award for Graduate Students at SMU (2020), the inaugural IEEE Power and Energy Society Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award (2023), Data-Driven Distributed Solar Visibility Prize in the U.S. DOE's American-Made Challenges Competition (2024), and OSU CEAT Excellent Scholar Award (2025). She has authored over 30 publications in flagship journals, including IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, etc. Her publications have received two Best Paper Awards at the IEEE PES Conferences and one Global ESI Top 1% Highly Cited Paper. Dr. Zhang serves as Vice Chair of Awards Subcommittee, IEEE PES Power System Operation, Planning and Economics Committee, Secretary of the IEEE Task Force on Performance Evaluation of Distribution System State Estimation, and one of the top 5 reviewers of IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid. She is an IEEE Senior Member.
Research Interests
Energy and Power Systems, AI and Machine Learning for Interdisciplinary Engineering Systems, Smart Grid and Active Distribution Networks, Climate-Energy Nexus, Grid Resilience, Cyber-Physical Systems and IoT, Renewable Integration
Achievements in numbers
As of May 2025, citations: 1300+; current lab members: 10; PhDs/Masters graduated: 1; papers published by lab students: 9; awards/honors received by lab students: 10
2025 News
06/2025 [Grant]: Our proposal about trustworthy AI has been selected to receive a three-year seed grant from the Hamm Institute for American Energy.
05/2025 [Appointment]: Dr. Zhang has been appointed as the Jack H. Graham Endowed Fellow of Engineering at OSU for recognizing excellence in teaching, research, and scholarship of early-career faculty.
05/2025 [Grant]: Three research proposals submitted by lab members have been selected for funding awards under the 2025 NSF DigiCARES Seed Grant Program.
05/2025 [Paper]: Our paper, Impact of Solar Integration on Grid Security: Unveiling Vulnerabilities, has been accepted by the 2025 IEEE Kiel PowerTech Conference.
04/2025 [Award]: Zaid Mahmood received the 2025 OSU Graduate Research Excellence Award— the only graduate student in the College of Engineering to be recognized with this distinction. This award is organized by the OSU Graduate College and the Office of the Vice President for Research to recognize graduate students' outstanding research accomplishments as reflected in their thesis or dissertation.
04/2025 [Award]: Dr. Zhang received the 2025 OSU CEAT Excellent Scholar Award, which recognizes her impactful contributions to scholarship — including research funding, publications, citations, research productivity, and graduate student mentoring.
04/2025 [Award]: Sungjoo received the 2025 OSU CEAT Dean’s Outstanding Graduate Student Award — the only graduate student in the College of Engineering to be recognized with this distinction, and the ECE Outstanding Graduate Student Award.
03/2025 [Lab Member]: Dr. Lei Wang has joined the lab as a Postdoctoral Researcher. Welcome!
03/2025 [Appointment] [Breaking News]: Dr. Zhang has been appointed as the Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid (IF: 9.8).
03/2025 [Recognition]: Dr. Zhang is elevated to IEEE Senior Member, a distinct network reserved for only 16% of IEEE Power & Energy Society members and 13% of IEEE members.
03/2025 [Recognition]: Dr. Zhang is recognized as one of the top 5 reviewers of IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid (TSG) for 2024 from the thousands of expert reviewers.
03/2025 [Talk]: Dr. Zhang gave an invited talk for the Graduate Seminar at the University of Tulsa, titled "Physics-Informed Trustworthy AI Toward Robust Situation-Aware Distribution Systems".
02/2025 [New Member]: Undergraduate student Joel Nnaji joined the lab as a Research Assistant. Welcome!
02/2025 [Paper]: Three papers about inverter-based resources, wildfire risk assessment, and digital twinning of distribution grids have been accepted by the 2025 IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES) General Meeting. Congrats to Zaid, Yuanshuo, and Yihao! They are
1) Yuanshuo's paper, Weather-Dependent Power Flow in Distribution Systems under Extreme Weather: Case Study and Risk Assessment in Wildfire Scenarios,
2) Zaid's paper, A Virtual Admittance-Based Fault Current Limiting Method for Grid-Forming Inverters,
3) Yihao's paper, On the Potential of Digital Twins for Distribution System State Estimation with Randomly Missing Data in Heterogeneous Measurements.
01/2025 [Appointment]: Dr. Zhang is appointed Associate Editor of the Journal of Modern Power Systems and Clean Energy (IF: 6.1).
01/2025 [Paper]: Yuanshuo's paper, Weather-Dependent Fast Power Flow in Distribution Systems: A Meteorological-Data-Aided Method, has been accepted by the 2025 IEEE Texas Power and Energy Conference (TPEC). [Read here]
01/2025 [Lab Member]: Jiahao Chen (22' Kent State U) joined the lab as a Ph.D. student. Welcome!
2024 News
11/2024 [Award] [Breaking News]: Dr. Zhang has led a team of EE and CS researchers to win the runner-up of the American-Made Challenges Competition: Data-Driven Distributed (3D) Solar Visibility Prize among 35 teams from U.S. industry and academia! This competition was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Office. This prize highlights the nationwide recognized expertise of the OSU power group in AI-driven smart grid technologies. Kudos to our team Pokes and Mustangs, Yihao Wang @SMU CS, Yuanshuo Zhang @OSU ECE, and Dr. Eric Larson @SMU CS! [See News Release]
11/2024 [Lab Member]: Zaid Ibn Mahmood completed his master's thesis defense, Congrats!
10/2024 [Talk]: Dr. Zhang gave an invited talk at the 2024 INFORMS Annual Meeting, titled "Physics-Informed Machine Learning to Enhance Distribution Grid Situational Awareness".
10/2024 [Paper]: Our paper, Knowledge-Inspired Data-Aided Robust Power Flow in Distribution Networks with ZIP Loads and High DER Penetration, is accepted by IEEE Transactions on Industrial Applications (IF: 4.2). Congrats to Sungjoo and Yuanshuo! [Read here]
09/2024 [Grant]: Undergraduate student Luke Dwayne Cardiel joined the lab as a Research Assistant. Welcome! Luke has been selected as an ECE Miller Research Scholar for the 2024-2025 academic year, based on his excellent research proposal under Dr. Zhang's advising. Congrats, Luke!
07/2024 [Grant] [Breaking News]: We have been awarded a $6 million grant for our NSF project, "RII FEC: Accelerating Community-Centric Energy Transformation through AI-driven Digital Twinning for Climate-Aware Resilience." Dr. Zhang will co-lead as OSU PI and work with NMSU, the University of Alabama Huntsville, and MSU to address the critical challenges of aging energy infrastructure. Kudos to the team! [See News Release]
07/2024 [Appointment]: Dr. Zhang is recognized as the secretary of the IEEE Task Force on Performance Evaluation for Distribution System State Estimation.
07/2024 [Award] [Breaking News]: Ph.D. student Sungjoo Chung won First Prize in the Graduate Student Poster Contest at the IEEE Power and Energy Society General Meeting, for our poster titled "Taylor-Expansion-Based Robust Power Flow in Unbalanced Distribution Systems: A Hybrid Data-Aided Method." Congrats to Sungjoo! [Read here]
05/2024 [Award] [Breaking News]: Our Paper, with Ph.D. student Sungjoo Chung as the first author, Taylor-Expansion-Based Robust Power Flow in Unbalanced Distribution Systems: A Hybrid Data-Aided Method, won the Best Paper award at the 2024 IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES) General Meeting. Congrats to the team! [See News Release] [Read here]
04/2024 [Award]: Three ECE students, Taha Saeed Khan (Advisor: Dr. Nazaripouya) , Ahmad Ali (Advisor: Dr. Cui ), and Sungjoo Chung (Advisor: Dr. Y. Zhang), won the “Best in Group” Award in the OSU 2nd CEAT Graduate Student Research Symposium. Congrats to Taha, Ahmad, and Sungjoo.
04/2024 [Award]: Yuanshuo and Sungjoo received the 2024 OSU Dr. Ramakumar Family Energy Scholarship sponsored by the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology.
03/2024 [Paper]: Our paper, Addressing Wind Power Forecast Errors in Day-Ahead Pricing With Energy Storage Systems: A Distributionally Robust Joint Chance-Constrained Approach, is accepted by IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy (IF: 9.8). [Read here]
02/2024 [Paper]: Our paper, Cooperative Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning for Adaptive Decentralized Emergency Voltage Control, is selected as the Best Paper Contest Finalist (Top 5) by the 2024 IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Conference!
02/2024 [Paper]: Our paper, Taylor-Expansion-Based Robust Power Flow in Unbalanced Distribution Systems: A Hybrid Data-Aided Method, is accepted by the IEEE PES General Meeting, a flagship conference in the domain of power and energy systems. Congrats to Sungjoo! [Read here]
01/2024 [Lab Member]: Yuanshuo Zhang (23' CUHK) joined the lab as a Ph.D. student. Welcome!
2023 News
12/2023 [Paper]: Our paper, Multi-Agent Graph-Attention Deep Reinforcement Learning for Post-Contingency Grid Emergency Voltage Control, is accepted by IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems (IF: 10.4).
11/2023 [Appointment]: Dr. Zhang is appointed Associate Editor of the journal IET Generation, Transmission & Distribution.
10/2023 [Appointment]: Dr. Zhang is appointed Vice Chair of the Awards Subcommittee, IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES) Power System Operation, Planning and Economics Committee (2024-2028).
10/2023 [Paper]: Two papers, Deep Reinforcement Learning-Enabled Adaptive Forecasting-Aided State Estimation in Distribution Systems with Multi-Source Multi-Rate Data & Cooperative Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning for Adaptive Decentralized Emergency Voltage Control, are accepted by the 2024 IEEE IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Conference.
07/2023 [Award] [Breaking News]: Invited talk in the Outstanding Dissertation Award Panel of the 2023 IEEE PES General Meeting, "Distribution System Situational Awareness: From Model-Based to Data-Driven and Beyond", please see the slides here . Dr. Zhang's dissertation was officially awarded as the 2023 IEEE Power and Energy Society Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation to recognize the research achievement of Ph.D. students who graduated in 2020-2022 in the power and energy domain.
06/2023 [Paper]: Our paper, "Artificial Intelligence Applications in Electric Distribution Systems: Post-Pandemic Progress and Prospect", is accepted by Applied Sciences. Congrats Sungjoo!
05/2023 [Talk]: Dr. Zhang began a one-month summer visit and gave a talk at Cornell University, a lot of brainstorming and discussion with Dr. Hsiao-Dong Chiang! Thanks for Dr. Chiang's hospitality.
03/2023 [Talk]: Invited Talk in Women in Data Science 2023 @ University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada. Happy International Women's Day!
01/2023 [Lab Member]: Sungjoo Chung (22' UIUC) joined the lab as a Ph.D. student. Welcome!
01/2023 [Paper]: Our paper, Off-policy deep reinforcement learning with automatic entropy adjustment for adaptive grid emergency control, is accepted by Electric Power Systems Research!
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