Keynote Speakers
TPEC 2026 proudly presents distinguished thought leaders from national laboratories, academia, and industry. Their keynote sessions highlight emerging challenges and innovations shaping the future of power and energy engineering.
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Dr. Carleton Coffrin is a senior scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is well known for his work on numerical methods for AC Optimal Power Flow and the open-source transmission network modeling package, PowerModels. Over the years, Dr. Coffrin has developed network resilience analysis tools that support government in assessing critical infrastructure networks. He has also supported several ARPA-e programs including GRID DATA and the Grid Optimization Competition. Recently Dr. Coffrin has been exploring applications of quantum computing technology, including possible applications to power grid analysis.
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 Dr. Payman Dehghanian
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Dr. Payman Dehghanian (IEEE SM’20) received a B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran, in 2009, an M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, in 2011, and a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA, in 2017. He joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA in 2018, where he is currently an Associate Professor. His research interests include electrical power systems reliability and resilience assessment, data-informed decision-making in power and energy systems, and smart electricity grid applications.
Dr. Dehghanian is the recipient of the 2014 and 2015 IEEE Region 5 Outstanding Professional Achievement Awards, the 2015 IEEE-HKN Outstanding Young Professional Award, the 2021 Early Career Award from the Washington Academy of Sciences, the 2022 George Washington University’s Early Career Researcher Award, the 2022 IEEE IAS Electric Safety Committee’s Young Professional Achievement Award, and the 2022 IEEE IAS Outstanding Young Member Service Award. In 2015 and 2016, Dr. Dehghanian was selected among the World’s Top 20 Young Scholars for Next Generation of Researchers in Electric Power Systems. He is currently a Senior Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid. |
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Dr. Patrick Chapman focused his career on power electronics, particularly with applications to renewable energy generation and storage. After receiving his Ph.D. from Purdue University in 2000, he held a professorship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign until 2010. Since then, he has held multiple engineering executive positions in industry, including Mainspring Energy, Redwood Materials, SunPower, and as a cofounder of both SolarBridge and Stormentum. He is currently the Vice President of Technology at Enphase Energy. Chapman is a Fellow of the IEEE and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
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