DESIRES Lab @ Peking University

The study of saddle-point problems from a dynamical system perspective and how stability analysis systematically inspires algorithm design

The fundamental limit of how fast an electricity market can be operated without jeopardizing system reliability

We are hiring! Postdoc openings on optimization and learning are available! See some of the details here.

DESIRES Lab is constantly looking for motivated graduate students and postdocs to work on power systems, electricity markets, electric vehicles, online platforms, reinforcement learning, etc. We welcome candidates from diverse backgrounds to apply, including but not limited to power & energy, economics, optimization, control, operations research, algorithms, applied mathematics, statistics, and learning. Feel free to email for more details, preferably with CV, if interested.

We have the university fellowships available for postdocs that provide more benefits. Candidates are encouraged to apply. Check here.

[2026.10] Pengcheng will be serving on the technical program committee of L4DC 2027. Please consider submitting papers.

[2026.10] Jiayi was admitted to CUHK to continue her PhD study!

[2026.09] Our paper “Urban Electricity Demand in Response to Price Surges: Evidence from Three U.S. Cities” was accepted to Applied Energy!

[2026.08] We were awarded a grant from NSFC to study electricity market design for heterogeneous agent-based DER participants!

[2026.08] We organized an extremely successfully IFAC Workshop on Contextual Control! Kudos to all the speakers and co-organizers! Check the photo here!

[2026.08] Pengcheng will be serving on the technical program committee of the 17th ACM eEnergy 2027. Please consider submitting papers.

[2026.08] Our paper “FlowCAN: Flow Conservation Attention Network for Solving Power Flow Equations” was accepted to IEEE EI2 2026!

[2026.07] Pengcheng was invited to deliver a talk at the IEEE CDC 2026 workshop on Reliable and Collaborative Learning-Based Control.

[2026.07] Our paper “Distributionally Robust Federated Learning with Multi-Source Data” was accepted to IEEE CDC 2026!

[2026.07] Our paper “Resilient Hybrid Air-Ground Networks for Disaster Preparedness and Response: A Distributionally Robust Approach” was accepted to Transportation Research Part E!

[2026.06] Our paper “The Role of Online Decision-Making in Coupled Electricity and Carbon Market” was accepted to IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering!

[2026.06] One more call for participation in our pre-conference workshop on Contextual Control at IFAC World Congress 2026 – please consider registering for our workshop.

[2026.05] We organized the 2nd Green Control Workshop at Peking University!

[2026.05] Zijian successfully defended his thesis – Desires Lab's very first PhD graduate!

[2026.04] Zhuo was admitted to UIUC to continue his PhD study!

[2026.04] Our paper “End-to-End Learning for Robust Economic Dispatch with Statistical Feasibility Guarantee” was accepted to International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) World Congress!

[2026.04] We would be organizing a pre-conference workshop on Contextual Control: Integrating Learning, Optimization, and Physical Structures in Control Systems at IFAC World Congress 2026. See you in Busan!

[2026.04] We would be organizing a special session on AI for energy at Conference on Scientific Machine Learning 2026 this August in Shanghai.

[2026.03] Yixuan Yu was awarded Student Travel Grant from IEEE ACC 2026!

[2026.01] Our paper “Learning-Augmented Primal-Dual Control Design for Secondary Frequency Regulation” was accepted to IEEE American Control Conference (ACC)!

[2026.01] Our paper “Multi-Vehicle Cooperative Motion Planning based on ADMM with Parallel Computing and Convexifying Guidance” was accepted to IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems!

[2025.12] Our paper “Counterfactual analysis of default bid market power mitigation strategies in two-stage electricity markets” was accepted to European Journal of Operational Research!

[2025.11] Our paper “Optimal Renewable Power Purchase Agreements for Data Centers” was accepted to IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid!

[2025.11] Chengrui was awarded Student Travel Grant from IEEE CDC 2025!

[2025.11] Our paper “Coherency Analysis in Nonlinear Heterogeneous Power Networks: A Blended Dynamics Approach” was accepted to ACM e-Energy 2026!

[2025.10] Pengcheng was awarded Peking University Boya Young Fellow!

[2025.10] Our paper “From Ambiguity to Transparency: Blockchain-Enabled Origin Traceability for Premium Agricultural Product” was accepted to Transportation Research Part E!

[2025.09] We were awarded a grant from State Grid to study data-driven methods for solving power flows.

[2025.08] Prof. Yan Jiang from CUHK-Shenzhen was our latest COOL speaker. She gave a talk on Charting a Stable, Safe and Incentive Path Towards Green Energy Systems.

[2025.08] Pengcheng will be serving on the TPC for ACM e-Energy 2026. Please consider contributing your work on any relevant topics!

[2025.07] We organized an extremely successful two-week summer school of Data and OR Intelligence! Prof. Enrique Mallada (JHU), Prof. Qing Ling (Sun Yat-sen University), and Prof. Yulong Gao (Imperial College London) offered three fantastic courses that span the intersection of control, optimization, and learning! Check our press release.

[2025.07] Our paper “Decision-Dependent Distributionally Robust Optimization with Application to Dynamic Pricing” was accepted to CDC 2025! See you in Rio!

[2025.07] We were honored to host Prof. Enrique Mallada from JHU to give a talk on Nonparametric Analysis and Control of Dynamical Systems: Stability, Safety and Policy Improvement at our COOL seminar.

[2025.05] We launched the application for our graduate summer school on Data and OR Intelligence (more details here).

[2025.05] Kekun, Huilan, and Chengrui successfully defended their theses.

[2025.05] Hengxing won Best Oral Presentation Award at IEEE International Conference on Power Science and Technology.

[2025.04] Our paper “On the Stability, Economic Efficiency and Incentive Compatibility of Electricity Market Dynamics” was accepted to IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control!

[2025.04] Chengrui was admitted to Caltech to continue his PhD study!

[2025.01] We had three papers accepted to AISTATS, ICLR, and ACM HSCC three days in a row!

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