Power Energy Innovation Lab

Dr. Lina He

Associate Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois Chicago

Precourt Scholar, Stanford University

Director of Power Energy Innovation Lab

Office: Room 1117, Sciences and Engineering Offices (SEO)
Email: lhe@uic.edu
Phone: 001 (312) 996-3085

Dr. Lina He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), Chicago, IL, and the Director of the Power & Energy Innovation Laboratory. She also holds a Precourt Scholar appointment at Stanford University. She received her Ph.D. degree from the University College Dublin, Ireland, in 2014 under the supervision of Professor Chen-Ching Liu (Member of the National Academy of Engineering, IEEE Life Fellow). She also received her Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China, in 2009 and 2007, respectively. Before joining UIC, she spent four years at Siemens Global headquarters in Erlangen, Germany and Siemens USA as a Senior Consultant and Project Manager.

Dr. He has over 20 years of academic and industrial experience in power-electronics-dominated systems. Since joining UIC in 2018, she has held key leadership roles as Team Lead PI/PI in major federal projects. Her efforts have led to winning more than $6.2 million in competitively awarded projects from federal agencies and industry partners—including the DOE, DOD, ComEd, GE, Siemens, AES, SEL, Ørsted, Eversource Energy, S&C Electric, ISO-New England, NREL, CAISO, EPRI, and PJM—contributing to initiatives valued at over $121 million. Additionally, she served as a Task Lead on “TWENTIES,” one of the largest European renewable energy integration projects, funded by the European Commission’s FP7-ENERGY program, with a total budget of €56.8 million.

Dr. He received the “Distinguished Senior R&D Award” from the IEEE Chicago Section and the “Outstanding Engineer Award” from the IEEE PES Chicago Chapter, both in 2022. She is also the recipient of the “Best Paper Award” from the IEEE Open Access Journal of Power and Energy (one of the two best papers selected from publications between Oct. 2021 and Sep. 2024), as well as three IEEE PES General Meeting Best Paper Awards in 2025, 2024, and 2016. In addition, Dr. He serves as the TCPC and Vice-Chair of the Distribution System Operation and Planning Subcommittee of the IEEE Power & Energy Society. She is also the Founding Chair of the Taskforce on “Control and Operation of DERs” and a Regional Representative on the IEEE PES Women in Power Committee.

Dr. He serves/served as an Associate Editor of several leading journals, including the IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy, IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, the IEEE Power Engineering Letters, the IEEE Open Journal of Power Electronics, and the International Journal of Sustainable Computing: Informatics and Systems. She holds two patents on power electronics-based self-shunt excitation systems. Dr. He’s research interests include AI for Power and Power for AI; Power architectures for large-scale AI and data-center infrastructures; Systematic grid-forming control of inverter-based resources; Control and operation of MMC-HVDC; Protection of power electronics-dominated systems; Dynamic and EMT modeling of hybrid AC/DC power systems; AI-enabled situational awareness and resilience operation of modern power systems. She is a Senior Member of IEEE.