GRADUATE RESEARCHER · STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Zhengjie (Jane) Yang

AI infrastructure & energy storage

I study the energy systems that support AI infrastructure, with a focus on data-center power delivery and energy storage. My work combines energy-system modeling and techno-economic analysis with industry experience in utility-scale storage and large-load development.

I am a graduate researcher at Stanford University’s Precourt Institute for Energy and hold an M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering, with a concentration in Atmosphere/Energy.

Portrait of Jane Yang
Stanford, California

DC2 · POWER DELIVERY

AC and DC architectures
for AI data centers

I model and compare power-delivery architectures, examining conversion losses, power quality, and the integration of energy storage.

CERAWeek 2026 poster PDF

BRIDGES · ENERGY-SYSTEM PLANNING

Data-center demand in
coupled energy systems

I extend energy-system modeling to examine how data-center demand affects electricity generation, natural-gas use, infrastructure investment, and costs. I compare power-supply configurations under consistent reliability assumptions.

Energy-system modeling · Scenario analysis · Techno-economics

02 / PUBLICATIONS

Selected publications

Peer-reviewed research
  1. 2026

    IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid

    Analyzing the Aggregate Flexibility of Generalized Energy Storage Resources: An Enhanced Region Learning Method

    Zhihao He, Zhiyi Li, Zhengjie Yang, Xutao Han, Can Wan, Ping Ju, and Yan Xu

    17(4), 3170–3181View paper
  2. 2026

    International Review of Financial Analysis

    Can corporate green strategic actions enhance green innovation performance?

    Huan Hua, Gaozhe Jiang, Gang Chao, and Zhengjie Yang

    118, 105421View paper
  3. 2025

    Finance Research Letters

    Green bond and greenwashing: New insights from Chinese firms

    Yenan Li, Zhengjie Yang, and Xiangyu Dong

    85, 107847View paper

SELECTED PROJECTS

Machine learning projects

Stanford course projects · 2026
Original bird classification poster, showing the visual and vision-language models and their evaluation

CS231n · Deep Learning for Computer Vision · 2026

Improving Bird Image Classification by Combining Visual and Language-Based Learning Approaches

Jane Yang, Marco Vizcarra, and Adem Rimpapa

A team study of fine-grained recognition across 555 NABirds classes, combining a part-aware ConvNeXt model with SigLIP vision-language representations through late fusion. Experiments compared text prompts and examined errors between visually similar bird categories.

The fused model achieved 92.48% top-1 accuracy in the reported test evaluation, compared with 91.00% for the ConvNeXt model alone.

Pass-at-k comparison of SFT, IPO, vanilla RLOO, and diversity-aware RLOO, with prompt-level standard errors

CS224R · Deep Reinforcement Learning · Spring 2026

Diversity-Aware RLOO for Pass@k Reasoning in Countdown

Jane Yang and Will Nathaniel Hansen

Studied reward shaping for Qwen2.5-0.5B that rewards distinct, verified solutions to arithmetic problems. I implemented the Modal training and evaluation workflow and diversity-aware reward pipeline, ran SFT/IPO/RLOO experiments, and analyzed solution coverage.

The best diversity-aware run improved pass@16 from 0.72 to 0.78 over vanilla RLOO on 50 held-out prompts. IPO reached 0.80; the study did not include multiple training seeds.

INDEPENDENT EXPLORATION

Personal Exploratory Projects

Prototypes & work in progress
Concept visualization of modular data-center racks, power equipment, and cooling systems
Concept visualization

ENERGY SYSTEMS · 4D DESIGN · MODULAR CONSTRUCTION

PowerTwin 4D: Modular Data Center Design and Fast Delivery

An independent prototype exploring how electricity supply, grid interconnection, and energy-storage choices can inform modular data-center design and construction sequencing. An interactive 3D model and 4D timeline connect power configurations, equipment dependencies, and site deployment.

I use this project to explore the link between energy-system planning and time-to-power. The demo uses illustrative planning assumptions; its outputs are not validated engineering designs.

DC2 research poster comparing power-delivery architectures for AI factories

SELECTED PRESENTATION · 2026

Direct Current (DC) Subtransmission Backbone for AI Factories

Jane Yang and Liang Min
Stanford University · CERAWeek 2026

Read the poster PDF

Original conference-poster version.

03 / BACKGROUND

Research & experience

Education

2024–2026

Stanford University

M.S., Civil & Environmental Engineering
Atmosphere/Energy

2019–2021

University of Pennsylvania

M.S., Electrical & Systems Engineering

2015–2019

Chongqing University

B.Eng., New Energy Science & Engineering

Selected experience

At Qcells, I developed BESS sizing and techno-economic tools and worked on revenue analysis across four U.S. electricity markets. At GridCARE, I worked in product strategy and business development, translating large-load customer needs into technical evaluation questions and communicating findings with engineering teams.

Through Anima Power, I consult on AI infrastructure and energy storage. Earlier, my undergraduate research focused on solar-integrated biohydrogen production and led to two co-invented patents.

Full background in my CV PDF