Dr. Fengqi (Frank) Li is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and a former R&D Associate Staff Member in the Grid-Interactive Controls Group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). His work sits at the intersection of architecture, computational design, and energy systems—advancing urban building energy modeling (UBEM), urban and energy planning, and community-scale electrification and resilience. Drawing on experience in research, education, and architectural practice, Dr. Li takes cross-disciplinary approaches that anticipate a future urban context defined by Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) integration, material intelligence, and high-variability data, motivating alternative planning frameworks. His research develops computational tools for urban design and planning that account for the energy paradigm shift from fossil fuels to renewable resources, examining how buildings with integrated DERs may reshape urban form, infrastructure roles, and emergent urban topologies.