Simona Onori

Associate Professor, Energy Science and Engineering, Stanford University

2020 Research Award Winner

Simona Onori is an Associate Professor in Energy Science and Engineering at Stanford University, where she also holds a courtesy appointment in Electrical Engineering, and she is a Senior Fellow of the Precourt Institute of Energy at Stanford. She funded and directs the Stanford Energy Control Lab, where she leads a team of graduate and undergraduate students, postdocs, and international visiting scholars conducting cutting-edge research on transportation and grid storage systems. Her contributions to sustainable transportation include designing novel algorithms to improve fuel economy of hybrid vehicles, developing advanced battery management systems for electric vehicles and second-life utilization, and proposing innovative modeling tools to accelerate adoption of new emissions reduction technologies.

Onori serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the SAE International Journal of Electrified Vehicles. She is SAE Fellow and a Dean’s Faculty Fellow in Clemson University’s College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences. She has been a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) since 2015, served for two years as a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society, and received the 2022 IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology Outstanding Paper Award. Other honors include the 2019 Clemson University Board of Trustees Award for Excellence, LG Chem’s 2018 Global Innovation Contest Award, the 2018 SAE Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award, and the National Science Foundation’s 2017 Faculty Early Career Development award. Onori is the author of Hybrid Electric Vehicles: Energy Management Strategies, co-author of two book chapters, and has published over 220 peer-reviewed articles and holds six patents. In 2024, Onori was named one of InspiringFifty Italy, an initiative that honors 50 women in innovation and technology who serve as role models for the next generation. In 2025, she was appointed to the Scientific Committee of the newly established Terna Foundation, launched by Terna—the operator of Italy’s national electricity transmission grid—to advance social responsibility initiatives in the context of the energy transition.

She earned a PhD in Control Engineering from the University of Rome Tor Vergata, an MSc in Electrical Engineering from the University of New Mexico, and a Laurea Degree in Computer Science from Tor Vergata.