Xuanda Cheng is pursuing a Master of Science in Climate and Energy Policy at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Hydro and Hydropower Engineering and a master’s degree in Hydraulic Engineering from China Agricultural University. He attended Purdue University’s GTAP Short Course, strengthening his skills in computable general equilibrium (CGE) modeling and economy-wide policy analysis. He also interned at the Foreign Economic Cooperation Center of China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. Drawing on his engineering and economics background, alongside experience in a policy institution, his interests center on energy market transitions and electricity markets. His extensive use of LLM agents also informs his interest in how AI and data center growth are reshaping energy demand.
“I came to Harris from hydraulic engineering. At China Agricultural University, I focused on water and food security. When I used the GTAP model at Purdue to assess how China’s population decline would reshape food production and water use, I realized the hardest questions are about markets, incentives, and who bears the costs—and those are policy questions. I chose Harris because it treats policy as a rigorous, evidence-driven discipline. The MSCEP is exactly the bridge I was looking for: a curriculum grounded in economics and data science, but built on a serious understanding of the underlying energy technologies.”