Alinson Santos Xavier

Highlights

Alinson Santos Xavier is a principal computational scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, developing advanced methods that combine optimization, machine learning, and high-performance computing to improve power system operations and planning. He leads several DOE-funded projects and is the developer of open-source tools like MIPLearn and UnitCommitment.jl, which support real-world grid operations and energy market analysis. His work bridges innovation in computation with practical applications across the energy sector.

Research Focus

Xavier’s research lies at the intersection of artificial intelligence, mathematical optimization, and high-performance computing, with the goal of solving complex problems in power systems and critical infrastructure. He focuses on developing learning-enhanced optimization algorithms that significantly accelerate the solution of large-scale problems, such as those found in grid operations and energy market modeling. His work includes creating tools for supply chain optimization, grid situational awareness, and reverse logistics, as well as advancing hybrid AI-optimization approaches to improve both computational performance and decision transparency. 

Impact

Xavier’s work is helping to transform how energy infrastructure is modeled, optimized, and secured. By developing hybrid approaches that integrate AI with traditional optimization methods, he is enabling faster, more accurate solutions to the complex problems facing modern power grids. His research has demonstrated 10x acceleration in critical optimization processes without sacrificing solution quality or interpretability, an essential requirement for grid operators.  

These advancements allow stakeholders to make faster, better-informed decisions about energy distribution, planning, and resilience. His open-source software is already in use by national laboratories, universities, and industry partners, bridging the gap between academic research and real-world implementation. 

Read the latest Argonne news about Alinson Santos Xavier:

Outage Prediction and Grid Vulnerability Identification Using Machine Learning on Utility Outage Data

This tool is not only useful for disaster response, but also provides a quantitative evaluation framework for system resilience against certain types of extreme weather events.

A General Framework for AI-Accelerated Power Systems Optimization

This general framework for the next-generation of power system optimization tools uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to automatically identify patterns in previously-solved optimization subproblems and effectively uses this information to accelerate the solution of new ones. 

Education

• Ph.D. in Combinatorics & Optimization — University of Waterloo (2017)
• M.Sc. in Computer Science — Federal University of Ceará, Brazil (2011)
• B. Sc. in Computer Science — Federal University of Ceará, Brazil (2018) 

Honors and Awards

• Impact Argonne Award (2020)
• Outstanding Reviewer, IEEE Transactions on Power Systems (2018)
• Honorable Mention, ACM South American Programming Contest (2008)
• Honorable Mention, ACM South American Programming Contest (2007)
• Silver Medal, Brazilian Olympiad in Informatics, Brazilian Computing Society (2005)
• Silver Medal, Brazilian Olympiad in Informatics, Brazilian Computing Society (2004)
• Silver Medal, Brazilian Olympiad in Informatics, Brazilian Computing Society (2003) 

Select Publications

• Iloeje, Chukwunwike O., Sarah Runchey, Audrey Gallier, Doris Oke, Li Yu, and Alinson Santos Xavier. ​“Assessing the deployment of solar-driven hydrogen from biomass at scale in the U.S.” Scientific Reports 15, no. 1 (2025): 14275.
• Muñoz, Gonzalo, Joseph Paat, and Álinson S. Xavier. ​“Compressing branch-and-bound trees.” Mathematical Programming 210, no. 1 (2025): 669-694.
• Davoudi, Hamid, Fengyu Wang, Di Shi, Alinson Xavier, Feng Qiu, and Yonghong Chen. ​“Market Pricing and Settlements Analysis Considering Capacity Sharing and Reserve Substitutions of Operating Reserve Products.” In 2023 North American Power Symposium (NAPS), pp. 1-6. IEEE, 2023.
• Iloeje, Chukwunwike O., Alinson Santos Xavier, John Atkins, Kyle Sun, and Audrey Gallier. ​“Protocol for designing, optimizing, and analyzing reverse supply chains using RELOG.” STAR protocols 4, no. 1 (2023): 101913.
• Chen, Yonghong, Feng Pan, Feng Qiu, Alinson S. Xavier, Tongxin Zheng, Muhammad Marwali, Bernard Knueven et al. ​“Security-constrained unit commitment for electricity market: Modeling, solution methods, and future challenges.” IEEE Transactions on Power Systems 38, no. 5 (2022): 4668-4681.
• Iloeje, Chukwunwike O., Alinson Santos Xavier, Diane Graziano, John Atkins, Kyle Sun, Joe Cresko, and Sarang D. Supekar. ​“A systematic analysis of the costs and environmental impacts of critical materials recovery from hybrid electric vehicle batteries in the U.S.” IScience 25, no. 9 (2022).
• Xavier, Álinson S., Feng Qiu, and Shabbir Ahmed. ​“Learning to solve large-scale security-constrained unit commitment problems.” INFORMS Journal on Computing 33, no. 2 (2021): 739-756.
• Xavier, Álinson S., Ricardo Fukasawa, and Laurent Poirrier. ​“Multirow intersection cuts based on the infinity norm.” INFORMS Journal on Computing 33, no. 4 (2021): 1624-1643.
• Xavier, Alinson S., Feng Qiu, and Santanu S. Dey. ​“Decomposable formulation of transmission constraints for decentralized power systems optimization.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2001.07771 (2020).
• Xavier, Alinson Santos, Feng Qiu, Fengyu Wang, and Prakash R. Thimmapuram. ​“Transmission constraint filtering in large-scale security-constrained unit commitment.” IEEE Transactions on Power Systems 34, no. 3 (2019): 2457-2460.
• Fukasawa, Ricardo, Laurent Poirrier, and Alinson S. Xavier. ​“The (not so) trivial lifting in two dimensions.” Mathematical Programming Computation 11 (2019): 211-235.
• Fukasawa, Ricardo, Laurent Poirrier, and Álinson S. Xavier. ​“Intersection cuts for single row corner relaxations.” Mathematical Programming Computation 10 (2018): 423-455.
• Xavier, Álinson S., and Manoel Campêlo. ​“A new facet generating procedure for the stable set polytope.” Electronic Notes in Discrete Mathematics 37 (2011): 183-188. 

Theses and Dissertation

• Xavier, Alinson Santos. ​“Computing with multi-row intersection cuts.” (2017).