Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation

The IEEE PES Power Engineering Education Committee (PEEC) is soliciting nominations for the 2025 IEEE PES Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award. The award is intended to recognize the best emerging academic work at the doctoral level that falls under the scope and enhances the mission of the IEEE Power & Energy Society (PES). Up to the top four finalists will be invited to present at a two-hour panel session at the IEEE PES General Meeting 2025 in Austin, TX, to present the main contributions of their dissertations, where the overall winner will also be announced.

Deadline for Nominations:

15 January 2025 before midnight EST (late submissions are not allowed)

Eligibility:

Eligibility requirements updated Nov. 2024.

• The candidate’s dissertation must have been published (and successfully defended) in the prior three calendar years, as indicated by the dissertation cover page. (For IEEE PESGM 2025: 2022, 2023, 2024)
• The nomination must be made by the dissertation advisor as indicated by the dissertation acceptance page. Self-nominations are not accepted.
  • Only one nomination may be made by each primary dissertation advisor. If the same advisor makes multiple nominations, only the first received will be judged
• Candidate must be able to attend the IEEE PES General Meeting 2025.
  • If the nominee requires a visa, it is their duty to obtain it prior to accepting the finalist invitation.
• The dissertation must be submitted in English, although nominations are welcomed and encouraged from any country
  • Translated versions of the dissertation into English are allowed
• The candidate must not have previously won the award or have been selected as a finalist (applicants that have previously applied but were not selected as finalists are still eligible to be nominated)
  • Note: Starting in 2026, dissertations may only be nominated once during their three-year eligibility

Eligibility limitations adhere to IEEE Policy 4.4.H – “Individuals serving on any board or committee involved at any stage of the recipient selection or approval process for an award shall be ineligible to receive, or act as a nominator or reference for that award. This conflict-of-interest limitation shall apply to all awards given by the IEEE or any of its organizational units.”

Selection Criteria:

Dissertations and application material will be evaluated for their contributions to the IEEE Power and Energy Society, the potential impact of the research on both theory and practice and the quality and relevance of publications produced during the Ph.D. studies to the PES. Dissertation and application material should showcase that the main contributions are to the IEEE PES rather than other related societies (e.g., PELS, IAS).

Nomination:

Nominations for the IEEE PES Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award should be submitted using the online nomination form. No other submission methods are allowed, including via email. The required documents and components for the nomination are:

• Name and email address of the nominator (dissertation advisor)
• Name and email address of the nominee
• Title and abstract of dissertation
• Suggested citation if the candidate is selected (max. 25 words)
• Nomination statement from primary dissertation advisor (max. 300 words)
• Copy of nominee’s dissertation in English (PDF)
• List of nominee’s publications during their doctoral studies, indicating which are IEEE PES venues (PDF)
• Nominee’s CV (PDF)
• Dissertation (as a .pdf in English)
• Three (3) endorsement letters (PDF, two pages maximum per letter). These letters should come from experts in the field who can provide additional insights and evidence of the dissertation’s impact. The dissertation advisor cannot write an endorsement letter.

Selection Committee:

• Timothy M. Hansen, South Dakota State University
• Paras Mandal, University of Texas El Paso
• Sara Eftekharnejad, Syracuse University
• Zongjie Wang, University of Connecticut
• Meng Wu, Arizona State University

For any questions about the nomination requirements, please email Tim Hansen or Paras Mandal.

Previous Finalists and Winners:

• 2024: Dr. Zhongda Chu for outstanding contributions to the IEEE PES towards the optimal operation of inverter-based resource-dominated grids.
  • Finalists: Zhongda Chu, Gonzalo Constante Flores, Abhineet Prakash, Manish K. Singh, Yu Weng
• 2023: no award was given
  • Finalists: Jason Avramidis, Xin Chen, Yuxuan Yuan, Ying Zhang