Aranya Chakrabortty
Professor
Biography
My research interests span all branches of control system theory with applications to large-scale electric power systems. I am a part of the FREEDM Systems Center, currently researching several system and control-theoretic problems for the US power grid using Synchrophasor (WAMS) technology, and its integration with renewable energy sources such as wind energy. My current research interests also include the application of machine learning based controls to power system applications at both transmission and distribution levels.
Education
-
Ph.D.
2008
Electrical Engineering
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, NY -
Master's
2005
Electrical Engineering
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, NY -
Bachelor's
2004
Electrical Engineering
Jadavpur University, India
Recent Publications
- Asynchronous Distributed Reinforcement Learning for LQR Control via Zeroth-Order Block Coordinate Descent (2024)
- Climate Change Mitigation, Adaptation, and Resilience: Challenges and Opportunities for the Control Systems Community (2024)
- Distributed Multiagent Reinforcement Learning Based on Graph-Induced Local Value Functions (2024)
- Optimal Charging Control and Incentivization Strategies for Electric Vehicles Considering Grid Dynamical Constraints (2024)
- Physics-aware Regression for DER Dispatch with Topological Reconfigurations of Radial Feeder (2024)
- Data-Driven Optimal Power Dispatch for Distributed Energy Resources in Radial Feeder using Multi-Stage Regression (2023)
- Distributed Reinforcement Learning for Networked Dynamical Systems (2023)
- Game-Theoretic Mixed H2/H∞ Control with Sparsity Constraint for Multi-Agent Control Systems (2023)
- Power Flow Optimization Redesign for Transient Stability Enhancement (2023)
- Reinforcement Learning based Approximate Optimal Control of Nonlinear Systems using Carleman Linearization (2023)
Books
Highlighted Awards
- NSF CAREER Award (2011)
- University Faculty Scholars (2019)
Awards & Honors
- 2025 - IEEE Fellow
- 2022 - NSF Director's Award for Superior Accomplishment at NSF
- 2020 - Outstanding Paper Award, IEEE Control Systems Magazine
- 2019 - University Faculty Scholar
- 2018 - Editor of IEEE Transactions on Power Systems
- 2016 - Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Control System Technology
- 2015 - Senior Member of IEEE
- 2011 - NSF CAREER Award
- 2009 - Allen B Dumont Prize (RPI, Top Ph.D. Graduate)
- 2006 - HKN Honor Society award for best Graduate TA, RPI
Recent News

Chakrabortty Elevated to IEEE Fellow, Class of 2025
Posted on January 7, 2025 | Filed Under: Faculty
Aranya Chakrabortty named IEEE Fellow.

2020 Promoted and Tenured Faculty
Posted on November 12, 2020 | Filed Under: Faculty
Congratulations to five outstanding ECE faculty members who were promoted to Professor or granted tenure this year.

Managing data flow to boost cyber-physical system performance
Posted on November 11, 2020 | Filed Under: Research
Optimizing data flow allows ECE researchers to dramatically improve the performance of cyber-physical systems, from autonomous vehicles to smart power grids.
Media Mentions

Army advances learning capabilities of drone swarms
August 10, 2020
Army-sponsored researchers, including NC State ECE’s Aranya Chakrabortty developed a reinforcement learning approach that will allow swarms of unmanned aerial and ground vehicles to optimally accomplish various missions while minimizing performance uncertainty.

NCSU and Johns Hopkins team up to stabilize power grid
January 3, 2014
Researchers have found that an increase in the use of wind power generation can make the power grid more fragile and susceptible to disruptions. Aranya Chakrabortty, electrical engineering, featured.

Wind energy may endanger the grid
January 8, 2014
Researchers identify a problem concerning the intermittency related to wind energy generation. Aranya Chakrabortty, electrical engineering, featured.