Professor Hongjian Sun

Professor

CEng, PhD, SMIEEE, MIET, FHEA

Affiliations
Affiliation	Room number	Telephone
Professor in the Department of Engineering	E378 (Higginson)	+44 (0) 191 33 42478
Member of the Centre for Communications Systems
Fellow in the Durham Energy Institute		+44 (0) 191 33 42478

Biography

Professor Hongjian Sun received his Ph.D. degree at the University of Edinburgh (U.K.) in 2011 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 (U.K.) as Professor (Chair) since July 2020, Associate Professor (Reader) in 2017-2020, and Assistant Professor in 2013-2017. He is 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 make contact to know more information.

Professor Sun has been involved in a number of activities with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE): He is a Senior Member of the IEEE; He is serving (or served) as a technical program committee (TPC) member for many IEEE flagship conferences, e.g., IEEE ICC (2010-now), IEEE Globecom (2011-now), IEEE SmartGridCom (2015-now), and IEEE VTC (2011-now); He is a peer-reviewer for a number of IEEE prestigious journals and was nominated as an Exemplary Reviewer by IEEE Communications Letters in both 2011 and 2012; He has been with the IEEE 1900.6 Standards Working Groups on the Advanced Radio Systems since 2011.

Professor Sun has been on the Editorial Board of:

IET Smart Grid as the Editor in Chief;
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 for Feature Topics: Integrated Communications, Control, and Computing Technologies for Enabling Autonomous Smart Grid, 2016, Internet of Things and Information Processing in Smart Energy Applications, 2017)
IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics (Guest Editor for special issue: Advances and Challenges in Satellite-Based Industrial Internet-of-Things, 2019)
Energies (Guest Editor for 2 Special Issues: Wireless Power Transfer, 2016, and From Smart Metering to Demand Side Management, 2017)
International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks (Guest Editor for 2 Special Issues: Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks, 2014 and 2016).

Additionally, he served (is serving) as an organizing chair for the following workshops/symposium:

IEEE SmartGridCom 2018 - Control and Operation Symposium, Aalborg, Denmark, 29 October -1 November 2018.
IEE ICC'2020 - Smart Grid Communications, Dublin, June 2020.
1st Workshop on Integrating Communications, Control, Computing Technologies for Smart Grid (ICT4SG), Glasgow, U.K., 11 May 2015.
Workshop on Communications Technologies for Smart Grid, Shanghai, China, 16 August 2015.
1st Workshop on Connecting All Things for Enabling Smart Cities (CONTEST), Nanjing, China, 15–18 May 2016.
2nd Workshop on ICT4SG, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 23-27 May 2016.
2nd Workshop on CONTEST, Sydney, Australia, 4–7 June 2017.
Green and Sustainable Communications and Network Computing symposium in WiMob Conference, New York, USA, 17-19 Oct 2016.
3rd Workshop on ICT4SG, Paris, France, 25 May 2017.
4th Workshop on ICT4SG, Kansas City, MO, USA, 24 May 2018.
3rd Workshop on CONTEST, Beijing China, 16-18 August, 2018.

Research and Projects

Prof. Sun's research mainly focuses on: (i) smart grid communications, (ii) demand side management and demand response, and (iii) renewable energy sources integration. He has an established track record of publishing high quality scientific articles: He has published over 150 papers in refereed journals and international conferences; He has made contributions to and coauthored the IEEE 1900.6a-2014 Standard; In addition, he has published 5 book chapters, and edited 2 books.

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

H2020 “TESTBED” project;
EPSRC “TOPMOST” project;
EPSRC DecarboN8 project;
H2020 “SmarterEMC2” project;
EU ERDF "SWIi" project;
UK BEIS "USER" project;
GCRF Networking "Seednet" project.

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".

Prof. Sun is currently supervising (or line managing) over 10 Postdoc Research Associate and PhD students. He also leads Smart Grid research activities and is Head of Durham Smart Grid Laboratory, which consists of 2 Real Time Digital Simulators (RTDS Novacor nad RTDS PB5), a PV emulation system, a wind turbine emulation system, an Electrical Energy Storage, an Electric Vehicle and charging station, an Air Source Heat Pump, smart meters, wireless sensor networks testing kits, and a software-defined radio platform (inc. 5 USRPs).

Research interests

Smart Grid and Smart Energy
Demand Side Management and Demand Response
Virtual Power Plant and Energy hub
Internet of Things and e-Health
Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure and Management

Research groups

Future Energy Systems
Sustainable Infrastructure

Research Projects

Smarter Grid: Empowering SG Market Actors through Information and Communication Technologies

Awarded Grants

2020: EU H2020 MSCA-RISE TESTBED2 Project: "Testing and Evaluating Sophisticated information and communication Technologies for enaBling scalablE smart griD Deployment
2020: Testing Voltage Levels In Legacy Appliances(£34569.00 from )
2019: DecarboN8(£26954.00 from Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council)
2019: Ubiquitous Storage Empowering Response (USER) - phase 2(£144237.97 from )
2018: Smart Energy Exchange for Decarbonising Energy Systems Research Network (SeedNet)(£14870.00 from Academy of Medical Sciences)
2017: Bio-inspired self-healing strategies triggered by big-data anomalies in systems exhibiting complex behaviour to enhance resilience(£6000.00 from Epsrc)
2017: Electrical and thermal storage optimisation in a virtual power plant(£52741.00 from Innovate UK)
2017: H2020-TESTBED: Testing and Evaluating Sophisticated Information and Communication Technologies for enabling a Smarter Grid(£158692.09 from European Commission)
2017: H2020-TESTBED: Testing and Evaluating Sophisticated Information and Communication Technologies for enabling a Smarter Grid(£20769.23 from European Commission)
2017: Solid Wall Insulation Innovation(£51393.00 from )
2016: Towards Joint Power-Communication System Modelling and Optimisation for Smart(£101098.80 from Epsrc)
2015: Smarter Grid: Empowering SG Market Actors through information and Communication Technologies (Smarter EMC2)(£298004.47 from European Commission)

Esteem Indicators

2018: Durham University Celebrating Excellence Nomination:
2017: Invited Speaker in 15th LUCI Anual General Meeting, Durham, November 2017:
2017: Written evidence to the Parliament EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee:
A response to the Parliament ;EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee's inquiry on Brexit: energy security.
2016: Written evidence to the Parliament Energy and Climate Change Committee: A response to the Parliament Energy and Climate Change Committee's Low carbon network infrastructure inquiry.
2015: Carbon Trust Expert Interview: Dr. Sun had Expert Interview by Carbon Trust in March 2015 in the field of demand response technologies. ;
2015: Lead Microgrid Researcher: Dr. Sun has been invited to attend the Microgrid Symposiums 2015 (by invitation only) as a lead microgrid researcher.
2013: Fringe Event at the Liberal Democrat Party : Dr. Sun discussed Smart Grid technologies with Parliamentary Private Secretary to Ed Davey, Stephen Gilbert MP, and Jim Sutherland, Engineering Director at ScottishPower Energy Networks, at the fringe event at the Liberal Democrat Party Conference in Glasgow in September 2013. ;

Media Contacts

Available for media contact about:

Engineering: Communications: Smart Grids
Engineering: Energy systems: Smart Grids
Engineering: Communications: Cognitive Radio
Engineering: Communications: Cooperative Communications
Science: Education, industry & the community: Smart Metering

Publications

Chapter in book

Jiang, Jing & Sun, Hongjian (2016). Relaying Technologies for Smart Grid. In Relay Technologies in Future Cooperative Communication Systems. Krikidis, Ioannis & Zheng, Gan IET Press.
Li, Dan, Chiu, Wei-Yu & Sun, Hongjian (2016). Demand Side Management in Microgrid Control Systems. In Microgrid: Advanced Control Methods and Renewable Energy System Integration. Mahmoud, Magdi S. Elsevier.
Ahmad, Bashar I., Sun, Hongjian, Ling, Cong & Nallanathan, A. (2014). Paving A Wider Way for Multimedia Over Cognitive Radios: An Overview of Wideband Spectrum Sensing Algorithms. In Multimedia Over Cognitive Radio Networks: Algorithms, Protocols, and Experiments. Hu, Fei & Kumar, Sunil Taylor & Francis LLC, CRC Press.
Sun, Hongjian, Nallanathan, Arumugam & Jiang, Jing (2013). Sub-Nyquist Sampling and Compressed Sensing in Cognitive Radio Networks. In Compressed Sensing & Sparse Filtering. Carmi, Avishy Y., Mihaylova, Lyudmila S. & Godsill, Simon J. Springer Press. 149-185.

Conference Paper

Edited book

Sun, Hongjian, Wang, Chao & Ahmad, Bashar (2016). From Internet of Things to Smart Cities: Enabling Technologies. Chapman & Hall/CRC Computer and Information Science Series. Chapman and Hall/CRC.

Edited Journal

Journal Article