Introducing | Women in Power Group
The main mission of WiP is to advance the world through the creativity and innovation of diverse leadership, and to foster the careers, connections and talent of women in the power industry to achieve their full potential and become leaders of the future.
The WiP initiative serves ambitious, professional women in the power and energy industry looking for leadership positions and career advancement – the skills, networking and mentorship offered benefit women throughout the industry, whether they are engineers, attorneys, policy makers or accountants. This initiative is not exclusive for women, therefore, everybody is welcome to join and participate.
Our role is to promote female power engineers in academia and industry, liaising between those who have established themselves in their respective area and are now serving as role models or mentors, and early or mid-career engineers who seek guidance and advice on their way to becoming leaders themselves.
We invite you to become a WiP member (it’s free!) by clicking here and benefit from assistance in finding a mentor/mentee, free webinars, access to special panels at PES conferences, networking opportunities and much more.
WiP in the UK and Ireland will be organising workshops, webinars and similar events to facilitate knowledge exchange, networking and collaboration within and between academia and industry. Be free to get in touch with our committee if you wish to learn more or suggest an event.
The WiP Committee consists of:
Angeliki Loukatou, Chair, Energy Insight Lead, National Grid ESO
Angeliki Loukatou is an Energy Insight Lead at National Grid ESO. She works in the Future Energy Scenarios Team and specialises in decarbonisation pathways till 2050. Prior to this, Angeliki was working as a lead research engineer in the R&D department of EDF Energy in the UK, specialising in business models for energy storage as a standalone asset or co-located with renewables. Specifically, she was examining the revenue models of battery storage assets behind participation in multiple electricity markets, such as wholesale, balancing, capacity and ancillary markets. Before that, she was a modelling analyst at Energy Systems Catapult working on second-life batteries for microgrid applications, long-term electricity price forecasting and grid-connected energy storage.
Angeliki also holds a PhD from the University of Manchester, completed at the Centre for Doctoral Training in Power Networks, in energy storage co-located with renewables. She is very interested in diversity and inclusion matters, open data and best coding practices. Specifically, she is currently the UK & Ireland Women in Power Representative of IEEE PES, the project manager of Cigre Women’s Network and the event lead of Cigre Next Generation Network.
Rosa Serrano, Vice-chair, Postgraduate Researcher, University of Manchester
Rosa Serrano is a PhD student in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Manchester. She is currently working on developing tools to improve the resilience of power systems against wildfires. Rosa obtained the title of civil engineer of industries and the MSc at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. Before starting her PhD, she had performed different roles in the public and private sectors, becoming passionate about public policy and energy market regulation.
She started her professional life in the leading distribution company of Chile; then, she was part of the National Energy Commission and the Chilean Energy Ministry. After that, she worked for Synex Ingenieros Consultores Ltda.; finally, she developed as the Director of Regulation and Studies at Empresas Eléctricas A.G., the electricity network association in Chile.
Ana Radovanovic, Secretary, Postgraduate Researcher, University of Manchester
Ana Radovanovic received the BSc and MSc degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of Belgrade, Serbia.
She is currently working toward the PhD degree at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Manchester, UK in the areas of renewable energy sources and power system dynamics.
Wenjuan Song, Event Lead, Lecturer at University of Glasgow
Dr Wenjuan Song is a lecturer in “Electrically Powered Aircraft and Operations”, Propulsion, Electrification & Superconductivity Theme/Group, School of Engineering, University of Glasgow, UK. Prior to this, she worked in University of Bath as a postdoctoral research associate from 2019-2021; she also worked as a research assistant in Robinson Research Institute, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand from 2016 to 2018.
Her field of expertise and research interests are protection solutions for electrically powered aircraft propulsion system using superconducting fault current limiter, and R&D of high efficiency and low loss superconducting applications in transportation and energy sector.
Lois Efe, Event Coordinator, Postgraduate Researcher, University of Manchester
Lois Efe is a Ph.D. Candidate in Electrical/Electronics Engineering at the University of Manchester (UoM), she is from Nigeria. She completed her MSc in 2021 and bachelor’s degree in 2019 all in Electrical/Electronics Engineering. Her research entails the use of different optimization methods in optimal scheduling of demand-side management in a distribution network taking into account the network parameter requirement of the DSO, also limited availability of flexibility and load payback.
She is currently an active member of the IEEE PES WiP UK&Ireland and IEEE PES SBC UoM.
Despina Yiakoumi, Industry Liaison, Forecasting Manager at Low Carbon Contracts Company
Despina Yiakoumi is a forecasting manager at Low Carbon Contracts Company. Before that, she was a researcher in energy economics at the Cyprus Institute in Cyprus. Prior to this, she worked as a Lecturer at the University of Aberdeen and as a Transport Analyst at Energy Systems Catapult (ESC) in the UK.
Despina pursued her PhD in electricity market design at the University of Aberdeen.
