Smart grid involves the imposition of an advanced cyber layer atop the physical layer of the electricity grid in order to improve the efficiency and lower the cost of power use and distribution, and to allow for the effective integration of variable energy sources and storage modes into the grid. This cyber-physical setting motivates the application of many techniques from the information and systems sciences to problems arising in the electricity grid, and considerable research effort has been devoted to such application in recent years. This talk will describe recent work on three aspects of this problem: applications of game theory to smart grid design; characterization of the fundamental tradeoff between privacy and utility of information sources arising in the grid; and distributed inferential algorithms that are suitable for the topological constraints imposed by the structure of the grid.
H. Vincent Poor is the Michael Henry Strater University Professor at Princeton University, where he is also the Dean of Engineering and Applied Science. His research interests are primarily in the areas of information theory, statistical signal processing and stochastic analysis, and their applications in various fields, including wireless communications, social networks and smart grid. Dr. Poor is a Fellow of the IEEE, and is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, the US National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Academy of Engineering of the UK, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Recent recognition of his work includes the 2011 IEEE Eric E. Sumner Award, a Royal Academy Distinguished Visiting Fellowship (2012), and honorary doctorates from several universities in Europe and Asia.
