45+

Peer-reviewed Publications

40+

Members

20+

Active Grants

10+

Partner Organizations

3+

Faculty Awards

75%+

Publications with Students

Mads Almassalkhi and Sam Chevalier during the featured panel discussion at this spring's Electrify Vermont Summit.

A core strength of CREATE is grid modernization and power systems engineering. This year, the team advanced on several fronts. Amritanshu Pandey published new circuit-theoretic frameworks for combined transmission and distribution grid analysis in IEEE Transactions on Power Systems and iScience, including a novel study disaggregating power outages from disconnections in Northern Illinois. Sam Chevalier tackled the adversarial robustness of power system optimization, identifying the smallest load perturbations that render DC-OPF infeasible (IEEE TPWRS), and co-developed Opti-KRON, a new method for optimal reduction of three-phase distribution feeders.

Mads Almassalkhi co-authored a new definition and research agenda for demand response in the DER era and led a cross-Atlantic research agenda on scalable grid architectures and distributed flexibility with Danish collaborators. With student collaborators at Tsinghua University, he developed problem-driven scenario-reduction methods for stochastic grid operation, which he presented at PSCC and published in IEEE Transactions on Power Systems. He also co-authored a widely noted IEEE Power & Energy Magazine piece on the physics of virtual power plants, and his group's community-centric energy planning framework for Arctic microgrids directly supported Alaskan communities and led to follow-on DOE funding.

Hamid Ossareh and Ph.D. Candidate Farzan Kaviani at this Spring's Vermont Electrify Summit

CREATE faculty are pushing the frontier where control theory, machine learning, and AI meet energy and infrastructure. Hamid Ossareh’s group had a prolific year with more than a dozen publications, spanning machine learning-based reference governors for fuel cells (IEEE TCST), uncertainty quantification for data-driven predictors (IEEE TAC), and constraint-aware control of water electrolysis and building energy systems, in addition to co-authoring the IEEE Power & Energy Magazine piece on the physics of virtual power plants with Mads Almassalkhi. Sam Chevalier is advancing machine learning and performance verification for critical infrastructure, the focus of his NSF CAREER award. Amritanshu Pandey is developing agentic AI systems for grid analysis and workflow automation. Laura Treers brings control to the physical world through robotics, closing the loop between CREATE's energy and autonomy missions. Many of these efforts are co-authored across CREATE groups.

Laura Treers presenting at this year's Vermont Tech Jam.

Laura Treers expanded CREATE's robotics portfolio with research on robot excavation in cohesive granular media (Granular Matter) and a comparative analysis of collective construction in insect societies (Insectes Sociaux). Her work bridges biological inspiration and practical robotic navigation, with new NSF and NASA funding supporting legged robot subterranean navigation and terrain characterization.

Kathryn Hinkelman with her recent IBPSA award for her dissertation blending engineering, biomimicry, and environmental stewardship

Kathryn Hinkelman published on multi-energy system resilience and equity (Energies), thermo-hydraulic steam pipe modeling for district heating (Building Simulation), and optimal multi-plant district heating operations (Energy Conversion and Management). Jeff Marshall contributed to work on cost-optimized energy storage for solar PV systems (Journal of Energy Storage) and a simplified building thermal comfort model (Energy & Buildings), as well as a new book on the Physics of Vortex Flows (Springer Nature).

Recent NSF CAREER Award winner Sam Chevalier working with his graduate student research team.

CREATE faculty held more than 20 active grants this past year, spanning federal agencies (NSF, DOE, NASA) and state and institutional programs (UVM Leahy Institute, Vermont Space Grant Consortium). Highlights include three NSF CAREER awards, multiple DOE-funded grid resilience projects, and collaborations with partners at Carnegie Mellon, Penn State, CU Boulder, PNNL, VELCO, and VEC.

CREATE launched its inaugural Impact Catalyst Award in 2026, an internal seed program to support promising, high-impact research ideas that can attract competitive external funding, foster new collaborations, and advance CREATE's research mission.

Congratulations to the winning team of Amritanshu Pandey  and Sam Chevalier for their proposed research project titled "Idiot-proofing Agentic AI Systems for Verified Cyber-Physical Autonomy." The next Impact Catalyst funding opportunity for CREATE faculty opens later this fall; stay tuned for the call for proposals.

Mazen Elsaadany presents his poster at a recent research conference.

Developing the next generation of researchers and engineers is central to CREATE's mission. This year saw important milestones for our students and postdocs:

CREATE faculty and Dartmouth colleagues gather at the inaugural Dartmouth-UVM Impact Discovery Workshop, hosted at UVM in summer 2025.

This Past Year

On the Horizon