Power Energy Innovation Laboratory
Dr. Lina He
Associate Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois Chicago
Precourt Scholar, Stanford University
Director of Power Energy Innovation Laboratory
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 Director of the Power Energy Innovation Laboratory. She also holds a Precourt Scholar appointment at Stanford University.
Her research focuses on system-level power architecture, modeling, control, and protection for power-electronics-dominated power systems, with particular emphasis on large-scale data-center and AI-driven power infrastructures under high power density and rapidly growing load demand. She is recognized for her leadership in HVDC technology, grid-forming control and operation, hybrid AC/DC modeling and transient analysis, and protection and coordination of converter-dominated systems. Her work addresses fundamental challenges in stability, reliability, resilience, and efficiency arising from inverter-based resource penetration, fast load transients, and sustained power demand growth in modern power infrastructures.
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 earned her Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China. Prior to academia, she held leadership roles at Siemens Global Headquarters in Germany and Siemens USA, leading international HVDC and system-level power infrastructure initiatives.
She has over two decades of academic and industrial experience in power-electronics–dominated energy systems. Since joining the University of Illinois Chicago in 2018, she has served as Lead PI or PI on major federally and industry-funded initiatives, securing more than $6 million in competitive research funding and contributing to large-scale programs exceeding $120 million in total value, working across academic institutions, industry partners, and government agencies.
Prior to joining UIC, she served as a Task Lead on TWENTIES, one of the largest renewable energy integration projects in Europe, funded by the European Commission’s FP7-ENERGY program, with a total budget of approximately €57 million, where she led international efforts on large-scale power system integration.
She is the recipient of the IEEE Distinguished Senior R&D Award and the IEEE Outstanding Engineer Award, and has received multiple Best Paper Awards from flagship journals and conferences of the IEEE Power & Energy Society (PES). She holds leadership roles within IEEE PES, serving as Vice Chair and Technical Committee Program Chair of the Distribution System Operation and Planning (DSOP) Subcommittee, and as Founding Chair of the Task Force on Control and Operation of Distributed Energy Resources. She has served as an Associate Editor for several leading IEEE journals, including IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy, IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, and the IEEE Open Journal of Power Electronics. She is a Senior Member of IEEE.
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