Terrence W.K. Mak is currently a Lecturer in the Department of Data Science & AI of the Faculty of IT. He is located in the Optimisation disciple group under Prof. Peter Stuckey. He is an active member of the Monash Energy Institute and the Monash Data Futures Institute. He has recently started working on projects under the theme of Sustainable Informatics.

Academic history: He has obtained a PhD (2018) from the Australian National University, a MPhil (2011) & a BSc (2009) from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He was a Postdoc Fellow in Georgia Tech and a Research Associate in University of Michigan. He has worked with his fomer PhD & Postdoc supervisor Prof. Pascal Van Hentenryck for over 10 years through University of Melbourne, Australian National University, University of Michigan, and Georgia Tech, and over 5 years with his former Master & Bachelor supervisor Prof. Jimmy Lee in Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has experience over multiple research domains and has publications spanning over computer science (AI/ML/differential privacy), electrical engineering (power/natural gas/control), and operations research (MILP/NLP). 

He is an interdisciplinary researcher and his research domain lies on the intersections of three traditional academic research areas ---

• mathematical & combinatorial optimization,
• machine learning, and
• energy  systems (including electric power transmission systems and natural gas pipeline systems).

His primary focus is to seek for novel methodologies combining both machine learning and optimization to solve grand climate change challenges in the energy sector to prepare for the future era. He is particularly interested tackling problems on:

• energy sustainability,
• net-zero emissions,
• climate-change resiliency, and
• disaster management.

External engagement records:

• Government: ARPA-E, U.S. Department of Energy.

ARPA-E Grid Optimization Competition [2019 - 2023], ARPA-E PERFORM project (Grid Research for Good) [2017 - 2018], ARPA-E PERFORM project (Risk-Aware Market Clearing) [2020 - 2023]

• National laboratories: Los Alamos National Lab; National Renewable Energy Lab; Pacific Northwest National Lab.

Project collaborators for ARPA-E projects.

• Industry: RTE France - French transmission operator; Midcontinent Independent System Operator - U.S. ISO/RTO covering 15 U.S. states; Origin Energy - Australia energy generation and retail company
• NGO: Kids Tech Tech

Partner for the Seth Bonder Summer Camp

Looking for motivated students interested to work on intersections between Deep Learning (DNNs) and Nonlinear Optimization for the futuristic Smart Grid.

• International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) 2021 - 2022, Senior/Program Committee  
• International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS) 2023, Program Committee
• AAAI Workshop: Privacy-Preserving Artificial Intelligence (PPAI) 2021 - 2022, Workshop Committee
• European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI) 2023, Meta Reviewer/Senior Program Committee