People

Thomas Morstyn

Associate Professor in Power Systems

Professor Thomas Morstyn leads the Power Systems Architecture Lab. He is also a Tutorial Fellow at Hertford College, an Honorary Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, and Co-Chair of the IEEE Power & Energy Society Task Force on Systems Modelling for Electricity Market Design. He received the BEng (Hon.) degree from the University of Melbourne in 2011, and the PhD degree from the University of New South Wales in 2016, both in electrical engineering. Previously, he was a lecturer at the University of Edinburgh and worked in Rio Tinto’s Technology and Innovation group.

Yuxin Xia

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Dr Yuxin Xia is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford, working on the Oxford Martin Programme on Circular Battery Economies. Her research explores pathways towards a sustainable and equitable battery circular economy, focusing on the potential value and system impacts of second-life battery applications in power systems. She obtained her PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 2025 and her MSc in Control Systems from Imperial College London in 2020. Her wider research focuses on power system optimisation and planning, with a particular interest in renewable energy and energy storage integration.

Hongtai Zeng

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Dr Hongtai Zeng is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford. He received his PhD from Tsinghua University in 2025. He is currently working on the EPSRC FleXEdge project, which aims to develop distributed machine learning methods for the large-scale, near real-time coordination of grid-edge flexibility resources. His broader research interests include power system optimisation under uncertainty, with a focus on resilient power systems under climate risks, the design of computationally efficient optimisation methods, and the application of machine learning to complex decision-making problems in modern energy systems.

Yihong Zhou

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Dr Yihong Zhou is a postdoctoral researcher working on AI and optimisation methods that can reliably scale up to solve large-scale power grid challenges. Future power systems will not be operated simply by adding more forecasting tools and control dashboards. They will need a new algorithmic layer that turns millions of grid-edge devices and AI-supporting data centres into "grid-intelligent" assets that operators can trust. This ambition forms the foundation of his research. He has recently completed the ARIA SAGEflex project on safeguarded AI agents for grid-edge flexibility, and is also involved in the IONATE Knowledge Transfer Partnership on AI-powered control for hybrid intelligent transformers.

Patrick Avis

DPhil Student

Joseph Cary

DPhil Student

Joseph Cary's research focuses on the role of arbitrageurs on the short-term power markets in Great Britain, with wider application and relevance of my work to European markets. Specifically, he is investigating whether taking speculative imbalance positions (known as NIV chasing or statistical arbitrage) benefits system balancing and wider market efficiency, and the role of speculative traders in ensuring interconnector flows post-Brexit. His wider interests are in electricity market design, storage, and policy analysis.

Erik Millar

DPhil Student

Erik Millar's research focuses on quantum optimisation algorithms for power system operation, with a particular interest in neutral-atom quantum computers. He studies how mixed-integer problems such as unit commitment and transmission switching can be formulated for quantum and hybrid quantum-classical methods, while using classical optimisation as a benchmark. Before starting his DPhil, he completed an MSc in Energy Systems at Oxford, and founded a company building DAC technology in the US.

David Smith

DPhil Student

David Smith is a DPhil student in Engineering Science at Oxford, focusing on machine learning applications to power systems. His research integrates weather data into machine learning models to address congestion, uncertainty, and efficiency in electricity grids, in collaboration with the European Space Agency's Dragon Programme. Before Oxford, David spent several years in industry across data science and software engineering, working in the remote sensing and satellite data sector. He holds a Master's in computer science and a Bachelor's in aerospace engineering, and previously interned at ESA applying machine learning to large-scale remote sensing problems.

Xiangyue (Max) Wang

DPhil Student

Xiangyue Wang is a DPhil student in the Oxford Power System Architecture Lab (PSAL). His research focuses on quantum computing for optimization in high-renewable power grids. He explores ways to utilize currently available quantum computers to speed up large-scale optimization problems such as optimal power flow that are critical to renewable integration. He won the 2025 international quantum hackathon, Blaise Pasqal Quantum Challenge, with a team of primarily PSAL members. He received his master's degree in data science from New York University, and his undergraduate degree from Rutgers University, where he majored in math, physics and minored in philosophy.

Martin Doff-Sotta

Postdoctoral Researcher, 2024-2026

Samuel Hayward

PhD Student, 2021-2024

Jiahao Ma

Visiting PhD Student, 2025–2026