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).
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. From February 2023 to October 2026, I served as the inaugural Head of Studies for the MSc programme in Sustainable Energy Systems at DTU.
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. Served as the inaugural Head of Studies for the MSc in Sustainable Energy Systems from February 2023 to October 2026. Associate Editor at Operations Research, member of ACER's Expert Group on the EU-wide flexibility needs assessment, and Senior Member of INFORMS.
Appointed leader of the Energy Analytics and Markets (ELMA) group at DTU Electrical Engineering in 2021. When the department merged into DTU Wind and Energy Systems in 2022, the group moved with it and became the EMA section. Built the long-running 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 (then the DTU CEE Summer School) in 2016. Nine editions have been held so far, now drawing around 70 participants a year from 25+ countries, with a tenth planned for 2027. Began teaching electricity markets and optimization at DTU, and was elevated to IEEE Senior Member 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.
External research stays: Several EMA PhD students are spending four to six months abroad. Torine Reed Herstad has just returned from NHH (Norwegian School of Economics), where she started a collaboration with Prof. Mette Bjørndal on transmission capacity allocation for cross-zonal reserve exchange, which continues. Yannick Heiser will soon join Prof. David Wozabal at WU Vienna (Vienna University of Economics and Business) to work on intraday market trading. Marco Saretta will visit Prof. Juan Miguel Morales and Prof. Salvador Pineda at the University of Málaga to work on Nash bargaining for PPA design. Shobhit Singhal will visit Prof. Munther Dahleh and his team at MIT to work on information design for power systems. Many thanks to all our hosts!
Accepted! Our paper "Towards European hydrogen market design: Perspectives from transmission system operators" by Marco Saretta, Enrica Raheli, and JK has been accepted for publication in Energy Policy [ arXiv ].
Delivered the first of three Electricity 101 sessions for Maersk, "How the power grid actually works", to around 80 colleagues worldwide. A central topic was Denmark's grid connection queue, where around 37,000 MW of consumption projects are waiting to connect, compared with a national peak of around 7,000 MW. Thanks to John Hannah and Julia Röcken for hosting. See my LinkedIn post here.
Welcome to our new PhD student, Sofie Davidsen [ DTU | LinkedIn ]. Sofie joins the EMA Section and the Nordic-SEC project, where she will work on dynamic reserve dimensioning in the Nordic grid in collaboration with Energinet, the Danish TSO. She will be co-supervised by Lesia Mitridati and me. Sofie completed her MSc in Sustainable Energy Systems at DTU, where she worked on stochastic optimization for electric vehicle aggregators bidding in aFRR activation markets in collaboration with Spirii.
