Dr. Nick Laws
Dr. Nick Laws is the Director of Modeling and Analytics at IdeaSmiths, where he keeps the team at the forefront of grid modeling and decision support tools. Prior to IdeaSmiths, Dr. Laws researched, developed, and deployed methods and software at Camus Energy for translating utility data into graph models, as well as software that leveraged the graph models for load flow analysis and optimal power flow. Prior to Camus Energy, Dr. Laws led the development of a flagship decision support tool at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), called REopt. REopt is a techno-economic optimization tool for determining distributed energy resource (DER) capacities and dispatch strategies to meet economic, resilience, and emission reduction goals. Dr. Laws is the sole-author of the 2022 “Centralized Control of DER with Price Signals” NREL software record, developed to control diverse DER with minimal information exchange. Dr. Laws also served as Principal Investigator on the 2020 NREL Seed Laboratory Directed R&D project “Co-optimizing DER for system operator and customer objectives”. Dr. Laws is passionate about preserving wild spaces for future generations and enjoying the wilderness with family and friends.
Dr. Laws holds a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Boston University, a M.S in Engineering Sciences from the Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College,
and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.