Dr. Fengqi You is a distinguished systems engineer and recognized leader in computational sustainability at the forefront of integrating artificial intelligence with complex system analysis. He currently holds the prestigious Roxanne E. and Michael J. Zak Professorship in Energy Systems Engineering at Cornell University where he maintains appointments across eight departments including Systems Engineering, Computer Science, Chemical Engineering, and Civil and Environmental Engineering. Prior to joining Cornell in 2016, Dr. You established his independent research career as an Assistant Professor at Northwestern University and as an Argonne Scholar at Argonne National Laboratory. His educational foundation includes a B.Eng. from Tsinghua University in 2005 and a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 2009, providing the interdisciplinary grounding that would define his innovative approach.
Dr. You's pioneering work has produced transformative advances in computational sustainability through the development of sophisticated optimization algorithms, statistical machine learning techniques, and multi-scale systems analytics tools that address pressing challenges in energy, agriculture, and manufacturing. His research has generated over 300 highly influential peer-reviewed publications in premier journals including Nature, Science, Nature Sustainability, and PNAS, accumulating an impressive h-index of 95 that reflects his substantial scholarly impact. Notable contributions include foundational work in materials informatics that has accelerated sustainable material discovery and innovative approaches to digital agriculture that optimize resource use while enhancing food security. His research has received significant recognition from editorial boards of leading publications and has been widely disseminated through prominent media coverage in outlets including The New York Times, BBC, and Nature.
Beyond his individual research program, Dr. You has significantly shaped his field through strategic leadership roles including serving as Chair of Ph.D. Studies in Cornell Systems Engineering, Co-Director of the Cornell University AI for Science Institute, and Director of the Cornell AI for Sustainability Initiative. He maintains influential editorial positions as associate editor of Science Advances, IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, and Applied Energy, while also contributing to the editorial boards of several leading journals in computer science and engineering. Through his research group at Cornell, Dr. You continues to train the next generation of systems engineers while expanding the frontiers of AI applications in sustainability challenges. His ongoing work focuses on developing next-generation computational frameworks that will further integrate artificial intelligence with multi-scale systems engineering to address complex sustainability challenges across the food-energy-water nexus.
