EnergyAtlas.io
A city-scale utility digital twin and energy simulation platform that integrates building models, geospatial data, smart-meter observations, and physical simulation.
Chengxuan Li
PhD Researcher · AI / Software / Energy Systems
Cornell University
I develop physics-informed and hybrid machine-learning methods for energy simulation, power-system analysis, and grid infrastructure optimization under electrification.
Selected work
All projects →
Scalable Smart-Meter Calibration of Urban Building Energy Models
Physics-supervised inverse surrogate learning to infer building energy model parameters from hourly smart-meter data, with uncertainty-aware calibration at urban scale.
ShadingZip: Within-Building Selective Computation of Shading Profiles for Urban Building Energy Models
Selective computation of representative sensors reduces ray-tracing evaluations by 67.4% at a mean WMAPE of 2.6%, while preserving full sensor and surface coverage.
Latest
All news →Exploration of the fidelity ladder for attic and basement representation in 5R1C Urban Building Energy Models (UBEMs)
Lost in aggregation? Guidance on functional geometric fidelity in Urban Building Energy Models (UBEMs)
Scalable smart-meter Urban Building Energy Model (UBEM) calibration: a physics-supervised amortized inverse surrogate learning framework
Sequential coordination of precomputed Urban Building Energy Model (UBEM) responses enables scalable feeder-level flexibility assessment
Selected experience
Full CV →Aug 2024 – Present
PhD Researcher · Environmental Systems Lab, Cornell University · Ithaca, NY
Research on data-driven, physics-based, and hybrid modeling methods for urban energy systems, advised by Prof. Timur Dogan, Prof. Oliver Gao, and Prof. Jacob Mays.
Mar 2025 – Present
PhD Researcher, Grid Innovations · Environmental Systems Lab, Cornell University, in collaboration with Avangrid / NYSEG
Research on data-driven modeling and flexibility assessment for electric distribution systems using utility operational and customer-load data.
Jan 2025 – Present
Lead Developer · EnergyAtlas.io · Ithaca, NY
Lead development of a city-scale energy digital twin and simulation platform in C#/.NET for building, utility, and urban energy analysis.
Selected publications
All publications →Calendars of the City: Deterministic Schedule Libraries to Enhance UBEM Load Duration Forecasts
IBPSA-USA SimBuild 2026
Building Simulation 2025, 19th Conference of IBPSA
A Bottom-Up Urban Building Energy Model for Evaluating Thermal Load Electrification Measures
Journal of Building Performance Simulation, 2025
Published online July 2025; in print in volume 19, issue 2 (2026), pages 289–316.
Education
Aug 2024 – Present
PhD, Systems Engineering, Minor in Electrical and Computer Engineering · Cornell University · Ithaca, NY
Jun 2024
M.Arch · Architectural Association · London, UK
Jun 2022
BA (Hons) · Architectural Association · London, UK