On September 16, the appointment ceremony of a Tsinghua University Distinguished Visiting Professor and an academic lecture were held. Professor Campbell Booth, Vice-Principal of the University of Strathclyde, was invited to visit and was appointed Distinguished Visiting Professor of Tsinghua University. He delivered an invited academic lecture on the future operation, protection and monitoring of decarbonized power and energy systems. The event was attended by Professor Hong Qiteng of the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the University of Strathclyde, Kang Chongqing, Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering (DEE), DEE Professor Wang Xiongfei and DEE Researcher Wang Bin, together with other experts and scholars from China and the UK and more than 40 faculty members and students. The lecture was moderated by Sun Kai, Deputy Head of DEE.
At the appointment ceremony, Sun Kai introduced Professor Booth’s academic achievements and his important contributions to promoting China-UK academic exchanges and talent cultivation. Kang Chongqing presented Professor Booth with the appointment letter of Distinguished Visiting Professor of Tsinghua University, and the two sides exchanged commemorative gifts of their universities.
Kang Chongqing presents Professor Booth with the appointment letter of Distinguished Visiting Professor of Tsinghua University
In his remarks upon appointment, Professor Booth expressed that being appointed Distinguished Visiting Professor of Tsinghua University was a tremendous honor and of great significance in his career. He expressed his gratitude for the long-standing support, friendship and trust of Tsinghua University, and stated that he would cherish this honor, actively fulfill the duties of a Distinguished Visiting Professor, and contribute to the exchanges and cooperation between the two sides.
He reviewed with deep feeling the long history of educational exchanges between China and the UK, and, drawing on his own experience, described the solid foundation that the University of Strathclyde and Tsinghua University have built over the years in scientific research cooperation, faculty-student exchanges, international summer schools and technology transfer. He noted that universities in China and the UK face many common challenges in the energy and power field and should further strengthen mutual learning and cooperation. Professor Booth also introduced that the University of Strathclyde attaches great importance to research innovation and technology transfer, leveraging its engineering experimental platforms and industry-university-research cooperation to bring research outcomes to practical application, and regarding talent cultivation and the development of young scholars as important support for innovation. He spoke highly of China’s achievements in high-speed railways, renewable energy and other fields, and expressed his willingness to take this appointment as an opportunity to actively fulfill his duties, promote the continued deepening of cooperation between the two universities in research, talent cultivation and academic exchanges, and sincerely welcome Tsinghua faculty members and students to visit the University of Strathclyde.
In his keynote lecture, Professor Booth focused on the future operation, protection and monitoring of decarbonized power and energy systems, analyzing the new challenges brought by the large-scale integration of high-proportion renewable energy and power electronic devices. He pointed out that as power systems dominated by conventional synchronous machines evolve into more complex, active and highly power-electronics-based systems, system inertia, fault characteristics, and frequency and voltage stability all change, placing new demands on traditional protection, monitoring and control technologies.
Addressing the above issues, Professor Booth introduced his team’s research on grid-forming control, synchronous condensers, travelling wave protection, wide-area monitoring, hardware-in-the-loop, digital twins and abnormal event early warning, and shared explorations such as using abandoned coal mines for energy storage and the digital planning of multi-vector energy systems, demonstrating a multidisciplinary research path for future energy systems.
Professor Booth also highlighted the new impacts of the rapid development of artificial intelligence and large data centers on power systems. As AI computing demand grows, large-scale data centers may create gigawatt-scale electricity demand, raising new requirements for grid planning, power supply and system flexibility; meanwhile, the adjustable loads of data centers could also become an important flexibility resource for future power systems. He said that artificial intelligence is profoundly changing teaching, research and the production of knowledge, while also bringing new challenges. In key areas such as power system protection, the advantages and limitations of AI should be fully understood to ensure the reliability and safety of technology applications.
Professor Booth delivers the academic lecture
After the lecture, faculty members and students engaged in in-depth discussions with Professor Booth on topics including AI-empowered power systems, multi-energy coupling modeling and wide-timescale simulation. Professor Booth introduced that, given the differences between electricity, heat, hydrogen and other energy systems in terms of time scales and domain-specific models, his team adopts multi-platform co-simulation and data interfaces to achieve cross-domain interaction, so as to better support research on the planning and operation of future multi-vector energy systems.
Q&A session
This appointment and invited lecture further consolidated the long-term and stable cooperative relationship between Tsinghua University and the University of Strathclyde. Both sides stated that they will continue to deepen research cooperation and faculty-student exchanges in fields such as new power systems, energy transition and talent cultivation, promote complementary strengths and mutual learning between Chinese and UK universities, and jointly address the new opportunities and challenges brought by the global energy transition.
Deepening China-UK exchanges and jointly promoting cooperation in the energy field
Group photo of participants
Guest Introduction
Professor Campbell Booth currently serves as Vice-Principal of the University of Strathclyde and Executive Dean of its Faculty of Engineering. The Faculty comprises 8 departments and multiple innovation centers, with more than 1,000 staff and over 6,000 students, making it one of the largest engineering faculties in the UK.
Professor Booth’s association with the University of Strathclyde spans 40 years. He joined the University in 1987 to study Electronic and Electrical Engineering as an undergraduate and later obtained his PhD. His research focuses on power system protection and monitoring. He currently serves as Principal Investigator of ENSIGN, a major Prosperity Partnership project funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), in collaboration with SP Energy Networks, the University of St Andrews, the University of Liverpool, Heriot-Watt University and other partners.
He has led key projects including EFCC and Phoenix, and jointly led a China-UK collaborative research project funded by EPSRC and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) together with Professor Dong Xinzhou of the Department of Electrical Engineering at Tsinghua University. Professor Booth has published numerous high-quality academic papers and holds multiple invention patents. He is also a co-founder of Synaptec, a spin-out company of the University of Strathclyde focusing on distributed sensing and monitoring technology, which secured funding in 2024 to support business development. He has been invited to deliver numerous invited lectures, served as Chair of the IET International Conference on Developments in Power System Protection (DPSP), and is active in several industry working groups.
