Personnel

Aleksandar (Aleks) D. Dimitrovski

Aleksandar (Aleks) Dimitrovski received his B.Sc. and Ph.D. in power engineering from the University Sts. Cyril & Methodius, Macedonia and M.Sc. in applied computer sciences from the University of Zagreb, Croatia. Before joining ORNL he was with Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories and Washington State University in Pullman WA. Before coming to the US he was a tenured assistant professor at the University Sts. Cyril & Methodius. His subjects of interest include advanced computing techniques in power system analysis and simulation.

Jose (Joe) R. Gracia

Mr. Gracia provides senior-level technical leadership in the ORNL Electricity Delivery R&D portfolio.  Technology areas include Power System Operations & Controls, Power System Visualization, Integration of Distributed Energy Resources, Robust Control Systems, Cyber Security, Energy Storage, and Power Electronics. Mr. Gracia serves as a researcher in the Power & Energy Systems Group.

Prior to joining the ORNL team, Mr. Gracia led a $155 million, four-year initiative at TVA that secured the control system, developed customized user interfaces for advanced power system management, and upgraded the telecommunications system.  It also deployed revenue-quality metering at all power generating stations, interchange facilities, and key customer delivery points. Mr. Gracia served in leadership positions in design, project management, construction, maintenance & restoration, and grid operations, and as the Senior Advisor to the Executive VP of Power System Operations.

Mr. Gracia is a founding member of the Transmission Owners and Operators Forum, a NERC-certified Power System Operator, a licensed Professional Engineer, and a Senior Member of the IEEE.  He graduated with electrical engineering degrees from the University of Florida (with honors) and Virginia Tech and an MBA from Emory University.

Stanton W. Hadley
Stanton W. Hadley is a Senior Researcher in the Power and Energy Systems Group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Mr. Hadley has a BS and MS degree in Nuclear Engineering and an MS in Engineering Management from the Missouri University of Science & Technology. He has over thirty years of experience in modeling the energy industry and has co-authored over 100 reports and articles on the topic. He has developed and used electric industry and national energy models in order to study topics such as renewable and conventional generation, transmission expansion, demand-side management, energy efficiency, electricity restructuring, carbon dioxide emissions, distributed generation, critical infrastructure protection, and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. He is currently a technical advisor to the Department of Energy’s Eastern Interconnection Transmission Study.

Philip Irminger

Philip Irminger began working with the Power and Energy Group in June, 2008.  He received his Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Tennessee in December of 2009.  He is currently working on his Masters at the University of Tennessee. He also was part of the University of Tennessee hardware team which placed 2nd at the 2009 SoutheastCon in Atlanta, Georgia.  His research focus is in power systems.

Travis M. Smith

Travis M. Smith (SM’91) is an Electric Power Systems Research Engineer in the Energy and Transportation Science Division at ORNL (Oak Ridge National Laboratory). He has over 19 years of experience in power systems and electrical system modeling. He has worked for a number of utilities (Tennessee Valley Authority, Georgia Power, and Southern Company) and has also worked as a consultant. He has a professional engineering license in the state of Tennessee with active capabilities in multiple jurisdictions as a NCEES record holder. Travis is also a NSPE, NCEES, and Senior IEEE member. Research focuses include simulation and modeling, substation design, protection, and identification of power system issues such as harmonics and flicker.

Isabelle B. Snyder

Education: Ph.D., Electrical Engineering, Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble in Grenoble, France; Diplôme d’Etudes Approfondies, Electrical Engineering, Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Hydraulique d’Electronique d’Electrotechnique et Informatique de Toulouse; B.S., Electrical Engineering from Ecole Supérieure des Ingénieurs de Beyrouth, Beirut, Lebanon.
Expertise: Power system anaylsis, Power system simulation and modeling, Electric metering design

Isabelle works as a power system research engineer at ORNL in the Power and Energy Systems Group, Energy and Transportation Science Division

Previously Isabelle worked on the Power Systems Engineering team for EnerNex, where she worked on wind turbines plant studies, underground cables modeling, and power system modeling and system impact studies.

Prior to Enernex, Isabelle was employed as a Design Engineer for Itron where she worked on the electrical metering design for single phase and polyphase metering applications.

Michael Starke received his Ph.D degree in electrical and computer engineering at the University of Tennessee in August 2009. He graduated with a B.S. and M.S. in electrical engineering at the University of Tennessee in May 2004 and August 2006, respectively. His areas of research interest include integration of renewables, buildings, and the grid.

Fangxing (Fran) Li
Fangxing Li received his BSEE and MSEE degrees both from Southeast University in China in 1994 and 1997, respectively, and then his Ph.D. degree from Virginia Tech in 2001. He was an Assistant Professor at The University of Tennessee (UT), Knoxville, TN, USA, from August 2005 to July 2011. He has been an Associate Professor at UT since August 2011. He has also been working at ORNL as an adjunct research staff since 2005.

Prior to joining UT and ORNL, he worked at ABB, Raleigh, NC, as a senior and then a principal R&D engineer for 4 and a half years. His current interests include distributed energy resources, reactive power, renewable energy integration, and power system economics. Dr. Li is a senior member of IEEE, an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy, the Secretary of IEEE PES Power System Planning and Implementation (PSPI) committee, and a registered Professional Engineer (P.E.) in the state of North Carolina.

Yilu Liu

Dr. Yilu Liu received her B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Xi'an Jiaotong Univeristy, China. She received her M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from The Ohio State University.

She holds the Governor's Chair in Power Systems at The University of Tennessee and is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. She is also an adjunt research staff at ORNL.

She was a professor at Virginia Tech from 1990 until 2009 and Former director of their Power Engineering Laboratory. She is a Fellow of the IEEE. Her current interests include power system wide are monitoring and control, FACTS and energy storage applications, transformer diagnosis, power quality and transients, IT applications in power.

Velma A. Williams

Velma Williams earned her B.S. degree in Education from Prairie View A & M University, and an M.S. degree in Education from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas.  After retiring from teaching children (28 years), she worked in ORNL’s Human Resources pool as a part-time Administrative Assistant.  Mrs. Williams joined the Power & Energy Group in 2010. Her major interest is in providing diligent secretarial support utilizing “Best Practices” to promote seamless job performance of team members.

Kevin Dowling

Kevin Dowling began working with the Power and Energy Systems group in June, 2012. He is a Master's student in Electrical Engineering at The University of Tennessee where received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering in May, 2012. His research interests include power systems analysis, protection, and applications of power electronics.

Xin Fang

Xin Fang is a Ph.D. student in Electrical Engineering at the University of Tennessee. He received her B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China, in 2009 and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from China Electric Power Research Institute, Beijing, China, in 2012. His current interests include power system economics and renewable energies.

Zhi Li

Zhi Li started to work as a post-doctoral researcher with the Power & Energy Systems Group at ORNL in September, 2012.  He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 2000 and 2003 respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Washington State University, USA in 2011.  His research interests include electromagnetics for power transmission lines, sensors for electromagnetic (EM) field measurement, power system analysis, and high voltage and insulation engineering.

Yifan Wang

Yifan Wang is a Ph.D. student in Electrical Engineering at the University of Tennessee. He received his B.S. in Communication Engineering from University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in 2010. His research interests include wireless communication networks, digital communication system design, communication and security in smart grid, and physical layer channel coding.

Marcus Aaron Young II
Marcus Young is a researcher in the Power and Energy Systems Group at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Marcus joined ORNL in 2010 from the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), where he spent five years in EPRI’s Power Delivery and Utilization sector as a Senior Project Engineer/Scientist. At EPRI, Marcus designed and deployed EPRI’s Smart Grid Substations Laboratory—with facilities in Knoxville, TN, Charlotte, NC, and Lenox, MA. Marcus is currently pursuing a PhD in Power System Engineering and is a registered Professional Engineer in the state of Tennessee.
Marcus received his MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Tennessee in 2005. As a graduate student, he participated in ORNL’s superconductivity program to develop and test superconducting power cables for operation at the 15 kV level.
Marcus joined EPRI in 2005 where his work interests included:

• Advanced methods for power system asset monitoring
• Factory acceptance testing of distributed generation resources
• Created customized testing requirements and procedures based on technology and targeted applications
• Tests based on IEEE 1547, UL 1741,  and other relevant standards
• Power quality monitor testing
• Fault current limiters and superconducting power cables
• Advanced substation communications & vendor interoperability (IEC 61850)
• Construction of  EPRI’s Smart Grid Substation Laboratory
• Lead efforts to integrate substation automation assets including protection relays, phasor measurement units, commercial data historians, and substation communication components from numerous manufacturers into one cohesive laboratory environment.

Currently, Marcus is focused on research aimed at developing novel applications using synchrophasor measurements through expansion of the University of Tennessee’s and ORNL’s FNET/Grideye program.

John P. Stovall

Mr. Stovall has a BS in Electrical Engineering from Rose Hulman Institute of Technology and an MS in Power System Engineering from the Ohio State University. He started his career at Public Service Company of Indiana, applying analytical techniques to generation and transmission system planning, power plant environmental monitoring, and corporate financial modeling. His interest include: applying visualization techniques to create a real-time, wide-area situational awareness, testing high-temperature low-sag conductors, designing and testing high-temperature superconducting cable, examining benefits and costs of superconducting magnetic energy storage systems, analyzing and demonstrating six-phase transmission, comparing costs and benefits of ac and dc transmission, evaluating distribution system designs with renewable energy generation systems, analyzing power system reliability, demonstrating demand-side management of residential heating and cooling, developing and applying computer modeling for power system planning simulations.