Speaking about his work, Yang says: "On the Chinese side, we are focusing on power system stability control including the optimizing of the operation of the clean energy smart grid and research on the Internet of Energy, which refers to the upgrading and automating of electricity infrastructures for energy producers.

"The University of Sydney is good in fields such as energy information security and distributed system control for mixed energy, and they are also experienced in energy market regulation and optimization management of enterprise energy," says Yang.

According to Yang, results from their research will be used by their industry partners for the next generation energy services.

Currently, there are 10 professors working with the joint research center at Tianjin University together with around 30 students.

The communication between the researchers and students from both universities has been on for a decade. For example, Yang says that to research a specific topic, the researchers from both universities set up a seminar to gather together to discuss things, and both universities also send researchers to do a three-or six-month visit.

"When we meet at any international conference, we set up meetings to discuss our research, and our students also communicate online," says Yang.

The University of Sydney and Tianjin University established the Sydney-Tianjin Universities Joint Centre for Sustainable Cyberinfrastructure in 2017, and have published more than 30 joint papers besides obtaining a joint international patent.