Daniel Molzahn has been named as the recipient of the 2021 IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES) Outstanding Young Engineer Award. Molzahn will be recognized with this award at the IEEE PES General Meeting, to be held July 25-29 in a virtual format. 

This award is presented to engineers who are 35 years of age or younger for technical and educational achievements and for involvement in local/transnational IEEE PES activities and leadership, professional society activities, and community and humanitarian activities. 

Molzahn has been an assistant professor in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) since 2019. His research focuses on improving power system reliability and resiliency by developing and analyzing algorithms that help engineers better design and operate power grids. Challenges addressed by his work include power flow nonlinearities, large-scale problems, stochasticity from renewables, and the transition from centralized to distributed paradigms. His major contributions to the field are in power flow nonlinearities, large-scale security-constrained optimal power flow, and distributed optimization. 

Molzahn is a leader for the Power Systems Computation Conference (PSCC). He currently serves as the chair of the technical program committee for the 22nd PSCC to be held in 2022; he was the vice-chair of the technical program committee for the 21st PSCC held in 2020. Molzahn has also been a reviewer and session chair for earlier editions of the PSCC and a member of past technical program committees. He and his colleagues won second place at the U.S. Department of Energy ARPA-E Grid Optimization Challenge in 2020. He was a guest associate editor for special issues of the IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid and the IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics. 

At Georgia Tech, Molzahn is a fellow of the Strategic Energy Institute and the faculty advisor for the Georgia Tech Energy Club. He is also involved in activities with the U.S. National Academy of Engineers (NAE). Molzahn was invited to attend the NAE-organized 2019 German-American Frontiers of Engineering (FOE) Symposium, and he accepted a request to serve on the organizing committee for the 2020 EU-US NAE FOE Symposium, which will now be held in November 2021.

Frank Lambert has been named president-elect for the IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES). His appointment to this role is effective on January 1, 2018, and he will serve in this capacity through 2019.

Lambert will then serve as the IEEE PES president in 2020-2021 and as its past president in 2022-2023. The IEEE PES provides the world’s largest forum for sharing the latest in technological developments in the electric power industry, for developing standards that guide the development and construction of equipment and systems, and for educating members of the industry and the general public.   

Lambert is a principal research engineer at the Georgia Tech National Electric Energy Testing, Research, and Applications Center (NEETRAC) and the Center for Distributed Energy. After spending the first 22 years of his career working at Georgia Power, Lambert came to Georgia Tech in 1996, where he helped to establish NEETRAC, an electric energy-focused research and testing consortium with over 40 electric utility and manufacturing members.

Lambert’s research interests are in power delivery systems, electric vehicles, sensors and communications systems for smart grid, power flow control, and integration of renewable energy into the grid. He earned bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering, both from Georgia Tech. 

Lukas Graber has been appointed to the Sutterfield Family Early Career Professorship, effective July 1, 2020. He is an assistant professor in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE).

Graber joined the ECE faculty in August 2015 after working at the Center for Advanced Power Systems at Florida State University, initially as a postdoctoral research associate and then as a research faculty member. He is a member of the electrical energy technical interest group and leads the Plasma and Dielectrics Laboratory. 

Graber currently advises six Ph.D. students and has graduated three Ph.D. students at Florida State and Georgia Tech. He and his students conduct research in the field of gas, liquid, and solid dielectrics for applications such as aerospace systems, naval systems, and terrestrial transmission and distribution systems. 

Graber has also been very involved in working with undergraduate students, both inside and outside of the classroom. He has advised 12 senior design teams since 2015, that oftentimes have interdisciplinary aspects to their projects. Graber supervised a team from the Opportunity Research Scholars Program with his Ph.D. students, and he also serves as the faculty advisor for both the HyTech Racing Team and the Georgia Tech student chapter of the IEEE Power and Energy Society. 

Graber has published more than 80 refereed journal and conference papers, and he holds eight patents. A senior member of IEEE, Graber contributes to standard committees, task forces, and study committees within IEEE and other similar organizations. His team’s work funded by a $3.3 million award from the ARPA-E BREAKERS program for developing DC switchgear technologies received attention in the technical press and can be read on Georgia Tech’s research news page.