Building the mathematical and algorithmic foundations of a fully renewable electricity system
Hi and welcome!
I am a Full Professor at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), where I lead the Energy Markets and Analytics (EMA) section in the Department of Wind and Energy Systems (DTU Wind) and serve as Head of Studies for the MSc programme in Sustainable Energy Systems.
My research builds the mathematical and algorithmic foundations of electricity markets, the systems through which flexibility, computation, and information jointly determine market outcomes in a fully renewable energy system. Three questions drive this work. How should markets and grid codes be designed to integrate flexible resources and enable sector coupling across electricity, hydrogen, heat, and natural gas? How can bidding, clearing, and market monitoring algorithms be made scalable, resilient, and trustworthy? And how does data become a governed economic asset in which information flows and incentives shape market regulation?
These questions define three interdependent layers of what I call the algorithmic electricity market: the design layer, concerned with market architecture, grid codes, and the economics of flexibility across coupled energy sectors; the execution layer, focused on provably safe algorithms for bidding, clearing, and market surveillance; and the information layer, addressing data markets, privacy-preserving methods, and information design for regulation. The EMA section’s mission is to advance all three.
Beyond publications, my research connects directly to European energy policy and practice. I am a member of ACER’s Expert Group on the EU-wide Flexibility Needs Assessment and collaborate with Energinet, Nordic RCC, Ørsted, Siemens Gamesa, IBM, Vestas, and Rambøll, among others. My course recordings are used by practitioners and researchers worldwide and are freely available on YouTube. For a broader perspective on my research and views on the energy transition, you can read my interview with TU Delft’s PowerWeb Institute.
I founded the DTU PES Summer School in 2016, now in its 9th edition, drawing 70 participants annually from over 25 countries. I have supervised 16 PhD students to completion. Alumni have gone on to faculty positions at the University of Michigan and DTU, postdoctoral fellowships at MIT, Georgia Tech, and Imperial College London, and impactful roles in industry and energy policy. I serve as Associate Editor for Operations Research and hold senior membership in both IEEE and INFORMS.
I completed my PhD at the University of Castilla-La Mancha under Professor Antonio J. Conejo, followed by postdoctoral fellowships at Johns Hopkins University with Professor Benjamin F. Hobbs and at DTU with Professor Pierre Pinson. I joined DTU as a faculty member in 2016 and was promoted to Full Professor in 2024. I grew up in Marand, a small city in northwestern Iran, and have spent my career moving between continents to build this research programme.
Research at the forefront of algorithmic electricity markets, advancing the science of how flexibility, computation, and information jointly shape market outcomes in a fully renewable energy system
Economics of flexibility, market architecture and grid code design
How should electricity markets and grid codes be designed to integrate flexible resources and enable a fully renewable system?
Provably safe algorithms for bidding, clearing, control, and surveillance
How do we develop algorithms that are scalable, attack-resilient, and provably safe under uncertainty?
Information design enabling data-driven market regulation
What information is revealed, to whom, under what incentives, and how does data become a governed economic asset?
Lead the Energy Markets and Analytics (EMA) section, now 15+ researchers, since 2022, and serve as Head of Studies for the MSc in Sustainable Energy Systems since 2023. Associate Editor at Operations Research, member of ACER's Expert Group on the EU-wide flexibility needs assessment, and Senior Member of INFORMS.
Grew the research activity in market design and analytics at DTU and built the long-running industry and TSO collaborations, with Energinet and companies including Ørsted, Siemens Gamesa, Vestas, IBM, and Rambøll, that anchor much of the section's work today.
Founded the DTU PES Summer School in 2016, now with nine editions held and a tenth planned for 2027, drawing around 70 participants a year from 25+ countries, and began teaching electricity markets and optimization at DTU. Elected a Senior Member of IEEE in 2018.
The period that shifted my focus toward market design and decision making under uncertainty, working with Professor Pierre Pinson.
Whiting School of Engineering, with Professor Benjamin F. Hobbs, on flexibility and virtual bidding in two-settlement electricity markets.
Under the supervision of Professor Antonio J. Conejo, on strategic generation investment and equilibria in oligopolistic electricity markets.
My first exposure to electricity market research, on self-scheduling of producers with limited resources in markets.
My first exposure to power system operation.
Dynamic reserve dimensioning in the Nordic grid
Detecting capacity hoarding in continuous intraday electricity markets
What system operators can publish: Differentially private release of congestion forecasts
Cooperative allocation at scale: Operating and settling large energy portfolios
Former students now hold positions at MIT, Imperial College London, the University of Michigan, and elsewhere.
Course recordings are freely available on YouTube and used by practitioners and researchers worldwide.
The 9th edition of the DTU PES Summer School concluded successfully, hosting 70 participants from 25+ countries selected from over 150 applications. The 2026 edition was led by Lesia, alongside co-organizers Johanna Vorwerk, Spyros Chatzivasileiadis, and myself. Speakers included Ricardo Bessa, Luiz Barroso, Thomas Dalgas Fechtenburg, Henrik Sandberg, Sonja Wogrin, Martin Bichler, Sijia Geng, Panagiotis Papadopoulos, Lena Kitzing, Lesia Mitridati, and Johanna Vorwerk. Participant feedback was outstanding: 98% would recommend the school, and 99% rated the overall organisation as good or excellent.
Welcome to our new PhD student, Rasmus Thorgaard [ DTU | LinkedIn ]. Rasmus is an industrial PhD in partnership with the Danish Utility Regulator (Forsyningstilsynet), co-funded by Innovation Fund Denmark. With an economics background from the University of Copenhagen, he will develop algorithms for "detection of intraday market distortions" with a particular focus on capacity hoarding. He will be co-supervised by Casper Bjerregaard (Forsyningstilsynet), Lesia, and myself.
Welcome to our new PhD student, Gloria Tintoré Vidal [ DTU | LinkedIn ]. Gloria joins the Data Unlocked project, funded by EUDP, and will work on "privacy-preserving data sharing for line congestion forecasting" with a primary use case in collaboration with Energinet, ENFOR A/S, and PowerLabDK, and additional use cases with Watts, Green Power Denmark, and Neogrid Technologies. She will be co-supervised by Lesia and myself.
Granted! Our project Nordic-SEC has been funded by Innovation Fund Denmark under the Grand Solutions Programme. The project aims to close the loop in Nordic TSO coordination for enhanced grid security and cost efficiency, and will run from April 2026 to March 2030 in collaboration with Nordic RCC and Energinet. The project is led by Lesia and me as co-PIs. Two PhD positions are upcoming. More details on the Projects page.
