Dr. Fran Li Elected Fellow of IET

Dr. Fangxing (Fran) Li, Education & Diversity Director for CURENT, was recently elected as a Fellow of IET (Institute of Engineering and Technlogy) for his industrial and academic contributions to power system economics and market operation. At 38, Li is among a very small group of less than 50 engineers who achieved the IET Fellow status before turning 40.

After receiving his Ph.D. from Virginia Tech in 2001, Li worked as a senior and then principal R&D engineer at ABB Inc., a global leader in power and automation technology, to lead the GridView development from scratch to Releases 1.0 and 2.0. Presently, GridView is one of the three major power-market simulators and is globally deployed at numerous power utilities and Independent System Operators (ISOs).

After joining University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in 2005, Li continued research in power system economics, which has led to many papers published in the most prestigious journal in his field. Li also made a number of contributions to other areas in electric power systems such as renewable energy integration, smart grid, power system computing, distributed energy resources and distribution systems.

Li has 130 technical publications, including more than 40 journal papers and book chapters. Founded 140 years ago, IET (Institute of Engineering and Technology), as well as its predecessor, IEE (Institute of Electrical Engineering), is a highly respected international, professional society in electrical, manufacturing and systems engineering with more than 150,000 members from 127 countries.