Sergio Dorado-Rojas is headed to France.

The Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Ph.D. student has been awarded the Chateaubriand Fellowship, an initiative of the French government that aims to initiate or strengthen collaborations or joint projects between French and American research teams. The grant is offered by the Embassy of France in the United States.

It will be the fourth country where Dorado-Rojas has pursued his studies. Before coming to the United States and Georgia Tech, where he is currently advised by Associate Professor Dan Molzahn, he completed his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá, Colombia. During that timehe also participated in a fellowship program in Munich, supported by the German government.

“Growing up in a family with Palestinian and Italian heritage in one of Colombia’s most diverse areas fostered my passion for international affairs,” Dorado-Rojas said. “That background has been a crucial professional asset in tackling the complex challenges that power systems face worldwide. I'm incredibly grateful that Georgia Tech shares this vision. The Institute’s commitment to providing opportunities abroad at the graduate level and its support for competitive programs like the Chateaubriand are a testament to its forward-thinking approach.”

Through the Chateaubriand Fellowship, Dorado-Rojas will study at CentraleSupélec, a leading engineering institute and a founding member of Université Paris-Saclay, one of France’s top research universities. There, he will be working under Professor Sorin Olaru, an expert on control theory who leads the joint research venue between CentraleSupélec and RTE (Réseau de Transport d'Électricité), the French transmission system operator.

It’s an important next step in Dorado-Rojas’s evolving Ph.D. research, which started in classical control theory for power grids but now embraces a new paradigm by integrating optimization into a controls-oriented perspective, while developing solutions tailored for modern, low-inertia power systems.

“This change in perspective does not discard the past but opens the door for more versatile and robust solutions,” Dorado-Rojas said. “In a way, my Ph.D. journey represents a transformation that mirrors the power grid’s evolution.”

Dorado-Roja attributes his shift in research to the rapid rise in data centers, cloud-based services, artificial intelligence (AI), and large language models, creating unprecedented energy demands and placing new loads on power systems.

Over the next nine months, he’ll be working on a project that addresses these real-time challenges using an innovative model predictive control (MPC) framework for managing grid congestion.

“MPC is like driving a car while looking ahead: it uses forecasts based on real-time observations to continuously adjust steering decisions,” Dorado-Rojas said. “We aim to adapt and extend this control framework to specifically manage the volatility introduced by large-scale data centers, opening the door to turn them from a potential liability into an asset for grid stability.”

The research directly tackles these challenges by exploiting the feedback decision-making nature of MPC, which is already transforming the French grid, according to Dorado-Rojas.

“The project will highlight the value of international collaboration and technology transfer, proving that successful solutions from abroad can be adapted to strengthen our own grid,” Dorado-Rojas said. “Our ultimate goal is to communicate a clear message to U.S. utilities that embracing innovative technologiescan modernize p grid safely and reliably, paving the way for a more resilient and sustainable future.”

On top of multiple competitive fellowships, Dorado-Rojas was also the first electrical engineering undergraduate to be awarded the Manuel Ponce de León distinction at Universidad Nacional de Colombia, an award that has existed since 1899.

After receiving his undergraduate and first graduate degree in Colombia, he went to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he got two more master’s degrees in electrical engineering in 2020, and computer and systems engineering in 2022.