Staff profile

Professor Hongjian Sun received his Ph.D. degree at the University of Edinburgh (U.K.) and then took postdoctoral positions at King’s College London (U.K.) and Princeton University (USA). Since April 2013, he has been with the Department of Engineering at the University of Durham. He is the Director of Research and Professor (Chair) in Smart Grid in the Department of Engineering, a Chartered Engineer, a Fellow of Durham Energy Institute, and a Fellow of Higher Education Academy.

There are a couple of PhD vacancies in his research group, please send him an email (hongjian.sun(at)dur.ac.uk) to know more information. Topics of particular interest are virtual power plant, green or carbon-neutral 6G communication networks, and extreme weather events & power grid resilience. 

Professor Sun has been on the Editorial Board of:

• IET Smart Grid as the Editor-in-Chief
• Science China - Information Sciences as an Editor
• IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics (Guest Editor 2019)
• Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews(Guest Editor 2022)
• Journal of Communications and Networks as an Editor
• EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking as an Associate Editor (2015-2018)
• IEEE Communications Magazine (Guest Editor 2016-2017).

He served as an organizing chair for over 10 workshops/symposium. Recent examples are:

• IEEE ICC'2020 - Smart Grid Communications, Dublin, June 2020.
• IEEE Smartgridcom'2023 - Data Analytics and Computation, Glasgow, Oct-Nov 2023.
• IEEE ICC'2024, June 2024 in Denver, USA.
• IEEE Smartgridcom'2025 - 29 September – 2 October 2025, Toronto, Canada

Research and Projects

Prof. Sun is the Head of Durham Smart Grid Laboratory and leads Smart Grid research activities focused on: (i) demand side management and demand response, and (ii) renewable energy sources integration and virtual power plants. He has an established track record of publishing high quality scientific articles, with over 200 papers in refereed journals and international conferences. He has made contributions to and coauthored the IEEE 1900.6a-2014 Standard, secured 2 granted patents, and published 5 book chapters and 3 books.

Prof. Sun has been the Principle Investigator or Co-Investigator on a number of projects, with funding successes from the EU H2020, EU ERDF, UK EPSRC, UK BEIS, Ofgem, Innovate UK, and industry. These projects include:

• UKRI "VPP-WARD" project - £1.84M;
• UKRI "SAT-Guard" project - £1M;
• EPSRC "CHEDDAR Hub" project - £3M;
• DSIT "CHEDDAR Hub -Uplift" project - £12M;
• H2020 "TESTBED2" project - €1.4M;
• H2020 “TESTBED” project - €882k;
• EPSRC DecarboN8 project - £1.3M;
• H2020 “SmarterEMC2” project - €3.7M;
• EU ERDF "SWIi" project - £2.5M;
• UK BEIS "USER" project - £1M;
• UK Ofgem/National Grid "CVDT" project -£880k.

In the past, he was the key researcher for EPSRC project "Robust Intelligent Lamp Post (ILP) Sensor Networks for Energy Efficient Transportation Systems" and Korean ETRI project "Cognitive Radio Technology".

• Smart Grid & Virtual Power Plant
• 6G & beyond Communications & Sustainability
• Extreme Weather Events & Power System Resilience
• Intelligent transportation systems

• 2024: World’s Top 2% Scientists, Stanford University, USA:
• 2024 - 2026: Imperial College London External Examiner:
• 2023: EPSRC Commendation for the top 4% of members of the Peer Review College:
• 2023: World’s Top 2% Scientists, Stanford University, USA:
• 2023: Written evidence to the Parliament:
• 2022: World’s Top 2% Scientists, Stanford University, USA:
• 2020: Written evidence to the Parliament:
• 2018: Durham University Celebrating Excellence Nomination:
• 2018 - 2026: Editor in Chief for IET Smart Grid Journal:
• 2018: Written evidence to the Parliament :
• 2017: Written evidence to the Parliament : EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee
• 2016: Written evidence to the Parliament : A response to the Parliament Energy and Climate Change Committee's Low carbon network infrastructure inquiry.