The Siebel Energy Institute, a consortium for innovative and collaborative energy research dedicated to advancing the science of smart energy, marked its official launch this week with the announcement of 24 research grants nearing $1 million. The winning research proposals, led by engineering and computer science experts from the Siebel Energy Institute’s member universities, will accelerate the development of algorithms and machine learning to improve the performance of modern energy systems.

Four winning projects with researchers from MIT include:

“Data-Driven Models of Cyber-Physical Security and Risk Assessment in Power Grids”

Lead Researchers: Munther Dahleh, the William Coolidge Professor of Electrical Engineering at Computer Science and director of the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS); and Mardavij Roozbehani, principal research scientist at the MIT Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS)

“Analytics for Resilient Control of Electricity Distribution Networks: Modeling failure models of distributed energy resources and protection equipment”

Lead Researcher: Saurabh Amin, the Robert N. Noyce Career Development Assistant Professor in the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

“Algorithms for Demand Response and Renewable Energy Integration”

Lead Researcher: Claire Tomlin, professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of California at Berkeley

Other researchers: Marta González, MIT assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and Emre Can Kara, postdoc at the University of California at Berkeley

“Understanding the Impact of Electric Vehicle Charging on the Power Grid: An Urban Mobility Perspective”

Lead Researcher: Scott J. Moura, assistant professor of civil and enviormental engineering at the University of California at Berkeley

Other Researchers: Insoon Yang PhD ’15, postdoc with Asuman Ozdaglar, professor in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and director of LIDS; and Roel Dobbe, researcher in the area of systems and control at the University of California at Berkeley

For more details on all of the grant-winning projects, visit the Siebel Energy Institute website.