Full Professor of Electrical Engineering

Trustworthy Decision Intelligence for Resilient Cyber-Physical Energy Systems

Full Professor, NEEPU | Chair, IEEE PES EICC Task Force | IEEE PES Representative to IEEE Systems Council | IEEE SysC Distinguished Lecturer (2027–2029) | Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher | Trustworthy AI & Resilient CPES

I develop physics-informed, privacy-preserving and verifiable learning, robust optimisation, and safe multi-agent decision methods for renewable-rich power and integrated energy systems.

213Scopus-indexed documents
10,408Scopus citations
50Scopus h-index
36Papers recognised as ESI Highly Cited Papers or Hot Papers (cumulative)
40IEEE Transactions papers

Scopus: 24 October 2026 (citations from 7,954 documents). ESI: cumulative recognition through the 23 September 2026 update. IEEE Transactions total: October 2026.

Google Scholar, 24 October 2026: 13,185 citations · h-index 56 · i10-index 148.

Profile

International research leadership across power systems and trustworthy intelligence

Yang Li is a Full Professor and Ph.D. Supervisor at Northeast Electric Power University. His research focuses on trustworthy decision intelligence for resilient cyber-physical energy systems, connecting power-system fundamentals with trustworthy artificial intelligence, optimisation and control.

He chairs the IEEE PES EICC Task Force on AI-Enabled Resilience of Cyber-Physical Energy Systems, serves as IEEE PES Secondary Representative to the IEEE Systems Council, and has been selected as an IEEE Systems Council Distinguished Lecturer for the 2027–2029 term. He was named a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher in Engineering in 2024 and 2025.

He was a postdoctoral researcher at Argonne National Laboratory from 2017 to 2019 and serves in international editorial roles.

Research

Four connected research themes

01

Trustworthy and physics-informed AI

Learning methods with physical consistency, interpretability, adversarial robustness, uncertainty awareness and verifiable performance.

02

Cyber-physical energy-system resilience

Detection, defence, recovery and resilient operation under false-data injection, coordinated attacks, missing data and cascading disruptions.

03

Robust optimisation and decision intelligence

Stochastic, robust and distributionally robust optimisation for renewable-rich microgrids, integrated energy systems and flexible demand.

04

Federated learning and safe multi-agent RL

Privacy-preserving collaborative intelligence and safe sequential decision-making for networked resources and multi-energy systems.

Application domains: renewable integration, smart grids, microgrids, distributed energy resources, storage, electric vehicles, demand response, forecasting, system security and stability.

Selected publications

Recent and representative work

Expanded selected list →
  1. 2027
    Economic feedback-guided forecasting and scheduling for microgrids using rolling model predictive control.
    Applied Energy, 427, 128778 (2027 issue; available online). DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2026.128778.
  2. 2026
    QSTAformer: A quantum-enhanced Transformer for robust short-term voltage stability assessment against adversarial attacks.
    Applied Energy, 405, 127196.
  3. 2026
    ZTFed-MAS2S: A zero-trust federated learning framework with verifiable privacy and trust-aware aggregation for wind power data imputation.
    IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 22(1), 165–175.
  4. 2025
    Enhancing cyber-resilience in integrated energy system scheduling with demand response using deep reinforcement learning.
    Applied Energy, 379, 124831.
  5. 2022
    Detection of false data injection attacks in smart grid: A secure federated deep learning approach.
    IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, 13(6), 4862–4872.
  6. 2021
    Coordinating flexible demand response and renewable uncertainties for scheduling of community integrated energy systems with an electric vehicle charging station: A bi-level approach.
    IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy, 12(4), 2321–2331.

Leadership and service

Editorial and professional leadership

IEEE leadership

  • Chair, IEEE PES Energy Internet Coordinating Committee (EICC) Task Force on AI-Enabled Resilience of Cyber-Physical Energy Systems
  • IEEE PES Secondary Representative to the IEEE Systems Council
  • Selected as IEEE Systems Council Distinguished Lecturer for the 2027–2029 term
  • Founding Chair, IEEE Systems Council Harbin Section Chapter

IEEE journals

  • Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid
  • Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy
  • Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics
  • Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications

Energy journals

  • Section Chief Editor, Energy Reports
  • Young Editorial Board Member, Applied Energy
  • Lead Guest Editor, Applied Energy VSI on AI-enabled resilience
  • More than 3,600 completed peer reviews

Recognition

Selected honours

  • 2025
    Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher
    Engineering
  • 2024
    Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher
    Engineering
  • 2022–2025
    Elsevier Highly Cited Chinese Researcher
    Electrical Engineering
  • 2022–2025
    World’s Top 2% Scientist
    Stanford/Elsevier ranking
  • 2020
    State Council Special Government Allowance
    China

Recipient of five provincial Science and Technology Progress Awards (two First-Class, two Second-Class and one Third-Class).

Named inventor or co-inventor on 21 granted invention patents (October 2026).

Research programmes

Selected programmes

2025–2026

Royal Society International Exchanges

China-side Lead / Co-Applicant; federated deep reinforcement learning for resilient multi-microgrids.

2024–2027

National Natural Science Foundation of China

Core team member; identification and adaptive defence against cyber-physical coordinated attacks.

2025–2029

National Key R&D Programme of China

Key participant; power-meteorological monitoring, intelligent forecasting and demonstration applications.

Industry

Utility-engaged research

Principal-investigator and project-lead work with State Grid, NARI and Beijing Kedong.

People and education

Graduate supervision and education leadership

3Ph.D. graduates as principal supervisor
29M.Sc. graduates
1 + 6 + 15Current postdoctoral, Ph.D. and M.Sc. researchers (October 2026)

Teaching portfolio

Power-system analysis, electrical systems of power plants, renewable integration, optimisation, intelligent scheduling, cyber-physical security, professional English, academic writing and research integrity.

Student achievements: Students supervised by Professor Li include 11 recipients of China’s National Scholarship for Graduate Students and 3 recipients of the Jilin Province Outstanding Master’s Thesis Award.

International curriculum leadership

Independently designed and taught Power Plant Electrical Systems in English for Samarkand International University of Technology (SIUT), with full academic responsibility for the course. SIUT formally confirmed that the course grades are included in its official academic records and count towards programme requirements and academic credits.

Course delivery and credit recognition confirmed by SIUT, October 2026.

Contact

Research and academic enquiries

School of Electrical Engineering
Northeast Electric Power University
Jilin, China