In this episode, we talk to Prof. Tao Hong, a Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Tao provides his insights on the future of energy forecasting research, and why we need to focus on reproducibility. He discusses the Global Energy Forecasting competitions, and what we have learned from them. He also sheds light o n the importance of industry and academic collaboration, and a business model that he has implemented successfully.He recommends the following reading for interested readers who want to go deep into forecasting and, specifically, energy forecasting:BooksForecasting Principles and Practice, by Rob Hyndman, and George AthanasopoulosMatrix Analysis and Applied Linear Algebra by Carl D MeyerPaperProbabilistic electric load forecasting: A tutorial review, T Hong, S Fan, International Journal of Forecasting, V 32 (3), 2016.