Shuchen Cong is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Dartmouth's Irving Institute for Energy and Society and a Lecturer at the Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies. Her research focuses on modeling the system-level impacts of residential and commercial energy behaviors, bridging micro-level decision-making with macro-level planning to inform energy system design and policy. At Dartmouth, she develops tools and frameworks that integrate household- and firm-level energy use patterns into broader models of grid resilience, reliability, and decarbonization.
Before joining Dartmouth, Shuchen was a Policy Researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), where she led and supported a range of applied research initiatives on distributed energy systems, cybersecurity, building performance standards, and housing affordability. She also led community engagement efforts that combined quantitative analytics with local priorities to support equitable retrofit investments.
Shuchen holds a PhD and MS in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University. Her doctoral research introduced a human-centered framework for quantifying energy-limiting behaviors, using large-scale smart meter and survey data to uncover behavioral patterns often overlooked in conventional energy poverty metrics. During her PhD, she co-founded Peoples Energy Analytics, a Carnegie Mellon spinout that developed predictive analytics to help utilities reduce customer default risk while supporting equitable access to energy.
She is committed to integrating data science, behavioral insights, and equity into the design of energy systems that serve both people and the planet.