Aino Leinonen

Aino Leinonen is a Research Associate at the Institute for Advanced Dynamic Uncertainty, where her work applies stochastic optimisation methods to energy policy design and energy system planning. She holds a PhD in Mathematics from Aalto University (Department of Mathematics and Systems Analysis), where her doctoral research developed two-stage stochastic programming formulations for energy dispatch under renewable intermittency — constructing scenario trees for wind and solar output, deriving optimality conditions for the dispatch problem, and analysing the value of stochastic solution relative to deterministic approximations across a range of system configurations.

Following her doctorate, Leinonen extended her work to multi-stage stochastic programmes for longer-horizon energy planning problems: capacity expansion decisions in which a national energy system must be designed to meet demand and emissions targets under correlated uncertainty in fuel prices, technology costs, and regulatory conditions. Her research produced decomposition algorithms adapted to the large-scale structure of these programmes and analysed the convergence of scenario reduction procedures used to make the resulting models computationally tractable.

At IADU, she applies stochastic optimisation to sovereign energy policy design: the optimal specification of renewable portfolio standards and capacity remuneration mechanisms under market and policy uncertainty, the mathematics of national energy security as a multi-period stochastic constraint, and the design of long-run energy transition pathways that remain robust across plausible future scenarios. Her work provides the Institute with rigorous optimisation tools for the energy sector mandates it carries for sovereign governments and ministries.