Building on the successes of four previous workshops on Foundation Models for the Electric Grid at Yorktown Heights, Imperial College, Argonne National Laboratory, and RWTH Aachen, we are excited to announce that the GridFM community will get together for its 5^th workshop at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in Boston, MA on March 17^th – 19^th, 2026. We hope that we all see you there.

Registration is now open. Thanks to Harvard University and others, we managed to keep the registration fee to an absolute minimum of $275. The fee is for covering the cost of catering and basic A/V services. I hope that you all understand. Registration will close March 2^nd, 2026 at 6pm ET. Folks, who cannot afford the registration fee, have the opportunity to apply for a registration fee waiver. If you apply, please do not register yet. In case your request will be denied, you will have the chance to register, even after March 2^nd.

At this workshop we will have our first poster session. The poster session will occur during a reception on March 18^th between 5:30 and 7:30 pm. To submit a poster contribution, please submit an application using the link below. The poster submission will also close on March 2^nd, 2026

Finally, we may have a very few stipends to waive the $275 registration fee. These waivers will be given preferentially to students and others who may lack the financial support. If you want to apply for a waiver, please do not register yet, but rather apply below. You will be informed about whether your waiver got approved on March 3^rd, 2026. In case we are not able to approve the waiver, applicants will have the chance to register through the normal process after the deadline of March 2^nd, 2026.

On March 17th between 5:15 and 6:45 pm we will have tutorial sessions. If you would like to present/teach a relevant tutorial (frameworks, tools, concepts for AI for the grid etc), please contact: admin@gridfm.org.

Tentative Agenda:

March 17^th

Time	Topic	Speaker(s)
11:00 am – 12:00 pm	Arrival/Coffee	All
12:00 – 12:15 pm	Welcome	Prof. Dr. Le Xie
12:15 – 1:00 pm	Keynote 1
1:00 – 3:00 pm	GridFM State of the Union Chairs: Hendrik F. Hamann – SBU/BNL, Thomas Brunschwiler – IBM Research This session will focus on Foundation Models for power systems beyond large language models. It will provide a snapshot of quantitative results, highlighting where Grid Foundation Model (GridFM) approaches stand today, what is proven, and what is promising. The speakers will further reflect on next steps to explore and on what remains hype. The discussion will cover different model architectures, training strategies, fine-tuning approaches, and model evaluation and performance, particularly with respect to generalizability, adaptability, data efficiency, accuracy, and topology robustness. Presentations and discussions focused on shared roadmaps, benchmarks, and collaboration are particularly encouraged.
3:00 – 3:15 pm	Coffee/Networking
3:15 – 5:15 pm	AI-ready Grid Data Chair: Priya Donti – MIT, Ravi K. Madduri – ANL Advancing AI for power systems requires large-scale, high-quality, and publicly available datasets. However, two major challenges hinder progress: regulatory constraints that limit data sharing and the vast size and complexity of the sampling space. This session will explore innovative approaches developed by the power systems community to overcome these barriers. Topics include privacy-preserving techniques for data sharing—such as open-data disaggregation, generative models, synthetic network topologies and federated learning—as well as efficient sampling strategies designed to tackle scalability while enabling generalization.  By showcasing these efforts, the session aims to highlight how AI-ready grid data can accelerate breakthroughs in foundation models and intelligent power system applications.
5:15 – 6:30 pm	Tutorials	All

March 18^th

Time	Topic	Speaker(s)
Time:	Topic	Speakers
7:30 am – 8:00 am	Arrival/Breakfast	All
8:00 am – 8:30 am	Keynote 2
8:30 am – 10:30 am	Cyber Security and GridFM Chairs: Meng Yue – BNL, El-Nasser S. Youssef – Hydro Quebec Integrating AI into critical infrastructure such as the power grid introduces new security and privacy risks that must be rigorously assessed and mitigated. This session examines these emerging challenges as well as the cybersecurity opportunities enabled by advanced grid‑focused AI models. Panelists will explore threat models spanning confidential data leakage, data poisoning, and adversarial manipulation—along with mitigation strategies such as privacy‑preserving training. The session will also highlight how AI can strengthen grid cybersecurity through enhanced detection capabilities, scalable modeling, and improved resilience analysis.
10:30 – 10:45 am	Coffee/Networking
10:45 – 12:45 pm	GridFM and AI for Power Markets Chair: Pierre Pinson – Imperial College While AI and foundational models have been increasingly used for modelling power grids and power system operations, their use in electricity markets has been more limited. This session will explore some of the early works with the use of AI at the core of electricity markets and with the use of foundational models for forecasting market outcomes. The session will also allow to reflect on application of FM for electricity markets and to draw a research map for the near future.
12:45 – 1:15 pm	Lunch/Networking
1:15 – 3:15 pm	Safe AI for the Grid Chair: Venkat Banunarayanan – NRECA, Kathrin Grosse – IBM Research As applications of Artificial intelligence across the electric power system are being explored, challenges on ensuring trustworthiness, transparency, cyber-resiliency and data privacy/governance need to be addressed. This panel brings together utility practitioners, government agencies and power grid regulators to explore approaches for embedding safety into every stage of the AI lifecycle—from data collection and model development to deployment, human-in-the-loop operations, and ongoing monitoring. Panelists will discuss challenges in applying AI to real-world use cases, evolving regulatory and standards landscapes, and how to balance experimentation with appropriate safeguards for both grid operations and customer-facing applications.
3:15 – 3:30 pm	Coffee/Networking
3:30 – 5:30 pm	Breakout session – GridFM use cases/applications – LLM/Agentic AI for Grid Chair: Lang Tong – Cornell – Optimization Chair: Sungho Shin – MIT This session explores state-of-the-art optimization methods for grid foundation models (GridFM) and their role in advancing power system analysis and operation. The scope of this session includes, but is not limited to, the use of optimization-based surrogates or proxies for efficiently approximating complex power grid optimization problems; optimization-driven data generation to support the training and evaluation of GridFM and other learning-based models; and recent advances in GPU-accelerated and AI-enabled optimization algorithms for solving complex power system optimization problems. Together, these topics highlight emerging synergies between optimization, accelerated computing, and machine learning for scalable and reliable GridFM applications. – Distribution Grid Chair: Fei Ding – NREL This session will focus on identifying and shaping GridFM use cases for real-world distribution grid planning and operations. Utility and industry speakers will share practical challenges, unmet needs, and operational constraints they face today. The session chair will complement these perspectives with live demonstrations of some prototypes. Building on these inputs, the session will engage all participants in an interactive discussion to collaboratively define, refine, and prioritize impactful GridFM use cases that are both operationally relevant and technically feasible for near- to mid-term deployment.
5:30 – 7:30 pm	Poster Session / Reception Chairs: Etienne Voss and Alban Puech – both with IBM Research We invite poster contributions that explore new methods, datasets, tools, and applications at the intersection of power systems and ML.  If your work pushes the boundaries of scalable grid computation or leverages GridFM‑related ideas, please share your insights with the community. Please submit your poster contribution here.

March 19^th

Time	Topic	Speaker(s)
7:30 am – 8:00 am	Arrival/Breakfast
8:00 am – 10:00 am	AI GridFM – Uses in Industry Chairs: Mark Lauby – NERC, Keith Benes – Euclid Strategies This panel will discuss current uses of AI/ML in the power sector and the lessons that can be drawn for further deployment of Foundation Models. The discussion will explore high-priority industry use cases where GridFMs can enhance decision-making, asset management, and system forecasting. Panelists will address the critical intersection of technical innovation and regulatory compliance, including aligning AI adoption with North American Electricity Reliability Council (NERC) requirements. By bridging the gap between foundation models and operational reliability, the session aims to provide a roadmap for moving from pilot projects to scalable, reliable industry deployments.
10:00 am – 10:15 am	Coffee/Networking
10:15 am – 12:15 am	GridFM Dynamics Chair: Xin Chen – TAMU This session explores the growing intersection between AI computing and power grid dynamics, focusing on two key areas. First, we present high-fidelity dynamic modeling and analysis of AI data centers, capturing the transient behavior of AI workloads, the electric dynamics of power supply infrastructure, and their stability impacts on the power grid. Second, we discuss the use of large language models (LLMs) to automate dynamic grid model construction and simulation workflows. Together, these approaches help improve our understanding and management of grid transients in the era of AI-driven electrical demand.
12:15 pm – 1:00 pm	Lunch
1:00 – 3:00 pm	AI4AI – Interactions between Grid and AI Data Centers Chairs: Kyri Baker – CU Boulder, Hendrik F. Hamann – SBU/BNL AI data centers are introducing many challenges, and possibly opportunities, for the power grid. In this session, we discuss these topics, how AI can possibly be used to help address some of these challenges, and the needs for capacity expansion, new operational algorithms, and new ways of thinking about large loads and their management in the grid.
3:00 – 3:15 pm	Wrap-up

This workshop is sponsored by Power and AI Initiative at Harvard SEAS.

Organizing committee:

• Francois Miralles – Hydro Quebec
• Thomas Brunschwiler – IBM Research
• Hendrik Hamann – Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University
• Priya Donti – MIT
• Mark Lauby – NERC
• Keith Benes – Euclid Strategies
• Meng Yue – Brookhaven National Laboratory
• El-Nasser S. Youssef – Hydro Quebec
• Ricardo Bessa – NESC TEC
• Pierre Pinson – Imperial College
• Venkat Banunarayanan – NRECA
• Lang Tong – Cornell
• Xin Chen – TAMU
• Sungho Shin – MIT
• Fei Ding – NREL
• Etienne Voss – IBM Research
• Alban Puech – IBM Research
• Kyri Baker – CU Boulder
• Kim Kibaek – ANL
• Ravi Madduri – ANL