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.

[2026.04] 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] I 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!

[2024.12] Zijian was awarded a grant by China National University Student Innovation & Entrepreneurship Development Program to work on Digital Management System for Anti-Counterfeiting and Traceability of Agricultural Products!

[2024.12] Zhuo was among 20 “Students of the Year Finalist” at PKU!

[2024.11] Prof. Wei Qi from Tsinghua IE visited us and gave a talk on Retail on Autonomous Wheels: Spatial Queueing and Online Facility Location.

[2024.09] Yixuan and Yixuan (two Ph.D. students with the same English first name) joined DESIRES Lab.

[2024.09] Yingzhu received Student Travel Grant and Workshop Support from CDC 2024!

[2024.07] Our paper “Accelerated Saddle Flow Dynamics for Bilinearly Coupled Minimax Problems” was accepted to IEEE CDC 2024.

[2024.07] Prof. Bin Liu from University of Strathclyde gave a talk on Data-Driven Maintenance Optimization in our COOL Research Seminar.

[2024.06] Lihuan Zhang from 01.AI gave a talk on LLM Training Acceleration Techniques & Challenges to share latest LLM advances in industry.

[2024.05] Our paper “Dissipative Gradient Descent Ascent Method: A Control Theory Inspired Algorithm for Min-max Optimization” was accepted to IEEE Control Systems Letters (L-CSS).

[2024.05] Prof. Florian Dorfler from ETH Zurich gave a talk on Data-Enabled Predictive Control (DeePC) in our COOL Research Seminar.

[2024.05] Our extended abstract “Reserve or Not? Ordering Emergency Supplies from an Opportunistic Supplier Facing Yield and Demand Uncertainties” was accepted to INFORMS MSOM Conference.

[2024.05] Our paper “Online Electricity Purchase for Data Center with Dynamic Virtual Battery from Flexibility Aggregation” was accepted to Youth Academic Annual Conference of Chinese Association of Automation (YAC).

[2024.04] Christopher Yeh from Caltech gave a talk on Learning for Robust Decision Making in Energy Systems in our COOL Research Seminar.

[2024.04] Chengrui received the prestigious Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) from Caltech to fund his 10-week stay in Southern California!

[2024.03] Prof. Dawei Shi was invited to give a talk on Data-Enabled Event-Triggered Learning and Control.

[2024.01] We were awarded two grants to study trustworthy AI for power systems and architecture redesign for electricity markets, respectively.

[2024.01] We organized an invited session on Towards Next-Gen Power and Energy Systems in Conference on Fully Actuated System Theory and Applications (Shenzhen, China, May 10 – 12), featuring a dozen of exciting talks from academia and industry. Join us!

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