Ramteen Sioshansi to join EPP as professor and director of CEIC

In January 2023, the department will welcome a new senior faculty member, Professor Ramteen Sioshansi, who will direct the Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center. Sioshansi was previously a full professor at The Ohio State University where he’s been a foremost researcher in the technical and economic impacts of integrating alternative energy technologies into power systems. 

"CEIC has long been an important part of EPP's and CMU's research, and it exemplifies our tradition of working at the intersection of engineering, economics, and policy,” said EPP Department Head Peter Adams. “Ramteen's breadth and depth of scholarship, industry connections, and collaborative spirit make him a great choice to lead this center forward. I am very happy to welcome him to our department and CMU." 

After his undergraduate education at Berkeley and a masters at The London School of Economics, Sioshansi began researching wholesale electricity markets in the early 2000’s with the advent of deregulation and competition in many U.S. and international energy markets. After returning to Berkeley for his Ph.D., he joined the National Renewable Energy Lab as a postdoctoral researcher, researching issues like sustainability, decarbonization, reliability, and resilience. As climate change has increased the urgency of research in these domains, his work has continually broadened to address new technical engineering challenges and policy design in economic markets.  

Professor Jay Apt of EPP and Tepper and Professor M. Granger Morgan of EPP and ECE, current co-directors of the CEIC, welcome Sioshansi to his new role.  

“We are delighted that Ramteen will be joining EPP and becoming the CEIC Director. He is one of the world’s leading scholars on energy policy, electricity market design, and the techno-economics of decarbonizing energy systems,” said Co-director Apt. “Ramteen’s research has had extraordinary influence, with 26 papers having over one hundred citations. His work in optimization, energy economics and markets, energy resilience, and decision science make him a perfect choice to lead CEIC.”

Sioshansi will lead CEIC as its next Director in conjunction with Professor Granger Morgan and Professor Nick Muller, who will both be Associate Directors.

He is an IEEE Fellow and served on the DOE’s Electricity Advisory Committee where he chaired its Energy Storage Subcommittee. His research was ranked in the top 2 percent of most cited authors by Elsevier in 2021, and Sioshansi received numerous awards in research and education. He received the 2020 Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Operations Research from the Operations Research Division of Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers. In 2019, he received the Outstanding Engineer Award from the IEEE Power & Energy Society of Columbus, Ohio. In both 2018 and 2015, Sioshansi received the Distinguished Faculty Award, awarded by the graduating undergraduate seniors of the Department of Integrated Systems Engineering. And in 2015, he earned The Ohio State University College of Engineering Lumley Research Award, for research productivity over the previous years.

Sioshansi had numerous reasons for joining the department, saying, “EPP is aligned well with what I do because I look at energy systems not purely as an engineering problem, but as a problem at the intersection of engineering, economics, and policy. Between people like Granger, Jay, the late Lester Lave, CMU has been a home for people working in areas related to what I do. And CEIC itself aligns closely with my work, and I’m excited for the opportunity to join and lead the center.”

As director he plans to continue broadening both the scope of research efforts and the range of faculty experts involved in the CEIC’s mission. In education he looks forward to leading courses similar to those previously taught on, for example, the concepts of market design in theory and application, encompassing market mechanisms for coordinating systems beyond just designing electricity markets. He’s also taught courses that offer a deep dive into specific aspects of energy and electricity modeling from technical, economic, and policy perspectives. 

Sioshansi will join EPP and the CEIC on January 1, 2023.