Hi, I'm Charles Dawson!
I use robots* to fight climate change.
I have a PhD in control theory and machine learning
and an unhealthy obsession with electricity.
Projects
Developed the load management and virtual power plant strategy for the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources.
Negotiated proactive grid planning and interconnection reforms to support renewable energy development in Massachusetts.
Research [Google Scholar]
As a PhD student in the Reliable Autonomous Systems Lab at MIT, I did research on...
Rare event prediction & model learning: Applied Bayesian inference and gradient-accelerated Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms to solve inverse problems, uncertainty quantification, and risk assessment for robotics and transportation networks. [ICLR paper] [IEEE T-RO paper]
Power flow: Wrote GPU-accelerated solver for security-constrained power flow in electricity networks, reducing the frequency of simulated power outages by 10x relative to state-of-the-art methods. [NAPS paper]
ML for controls: Developed robust learning-for-control software for robot and plasma fusion control problems. [Nature Comms paper] [IEEE T-RO paper] [CoRL paper] [IROS paper]