Alexander Stevenson is currently a Ph.D. student and Graduate Research Assistant working under the supervision and mentorship of Dr. Sarwat. He received his BS degree from Florida International University with a focus on power systems engineering in 2021 and is currently working on the real-time simulation of smart-grid hardware devices and control system logic towards design, validation, and optimization. His main research interests include renewable and sustainable energy integration into the power grid and battery energy storage systems.

Email:astev028@fiu.edu

Sukanta Roy obtained his B.Sc (2008) degree from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology and a Master in Engineering Science (2015) with distinction from University of Malaya, Malaysia, from Electrical Engineering. Prior to joining the EPS lab at FIU as full time research assistant from fall 2021, he had worked for BanglaCAT, an exclusive dealer of Caterpillar Inc. for more than 11 years, as an Electric Power service manager. His core research interests lie in distributed generation based power systems realization, control of  power electronics in DC/AC micro grid, and reliability enhancement for systems with renewable energy sources.

Email: sroy007@fiu.edu

 

Milad Behnamfar received his B.S. degree in electrical engineering from University of Kurdistan in 2016 and received his M.S. degree in power electronics and electric machines from Shahid Beheshti University in 2018. He is pursuing a Ph.D. at Florida International University and working as a research assistant at Energy, Power, Sustainability, and Intelligence (EPSi) lab. His main research interest is wireless power transfer for the application of electric vehicle charging, high frequency converters, power electronics, and control theories. He is a regular reviewer of IEEE journals and conferences.

Email:mbehn009@fiu.edu

Md Abu Taher, obtained his B.Sc(2008) degree from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology(BUET) in Electrical and Electronics Engineering(EEE) prior to joining the EPS lab at FIU as a full-time research assistant from Fall 2022 ,He worked for PGCB for more than three years as an Executive in the field of Bulk power transmission planning and optimization. Moreover, He worked for Grameenphone for more than seven years as Sr. Lead Engineer in the various filed of RF planning, Energy consumption optimization, IoT-based Smart meters, and e-VTS integration into the network. His core research interest lies in microgrid real-time simulation by OPAL-RT and smooth integration into the AC grid, Devising Efficient data-oriented control mechanisms for smart-grid energy management for quick grid stability response by virtual inertia emulation.

Email:mtahe010@fiu.edu

Hasan Iqbal, has received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 2016 and master’s degree in electrical engineering with specialization in instrumentation and control in 2019 from Aligarh Muslim University, India. He is pursuing a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering at Florida International University and working as a graduate research assistant at Energy, Power, Sustainability, and intelligence (EPSi) lab. He has published papers and book chapters in high impact factor peer reviewed journals and conferences in the field of power electronics and control. His research interests include control of power electronics converter, microgrid, optimization techniques, and integration of renewable energy to grid. He is an active reviewer for different journals and IEEE conferences.

Email:hiqba003@fiu.edu

Graduated Students

Hugo Riggs, a Ph.D. candidate at the Engineering and Computing Department with B.S. Computer Science, Florida International University, and Eckerd college respectively. Hugo’s research is predominantly on developing a forecasting algorithm of utility-scale photovoltaic array generation over multiple time scales spanning one minute to 1 month. Hugo also does research on the vulnerabilities of distributed energy resources to cyber-attacks.

Email:hrigg002@fiu.edu

Anjan Debnath obtained his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE) from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) before he joined at EPS Lab in Fall-2019 as a PhD Student. He has more than 2 years of professional experience in power engineering field and more than 8 years of teaching experience. His research interests include control applications in distributed generation systems, microgrids and applications of artificial neural networks in renewable energy systems.

Email:adebn001@fiu.edu

Shamini Dharmasena received her BS degree from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka in 2013 and MS degree from the University of Akron, OH in 2018 both in Electrical Engineering. From 2014 to 2016 she worked in the industry as an electrical engineer involving in low voltage system design and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) implementation projects. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Electrical Engineering under the supervision of Dr. Arif Sarwat. Her research interests include power electronics, vehicle to grid integration, energy management control systems and smart grid.

Email:ikona001@fiu.edu

Temitayo Olowu received his OND (2001), HND (2005), from the Federal Polytechnic Ado-Ekiti and his BS (2010) and MS (2014) from University of Benin, Nigeria all in Electrical Engineering (Power Systems and Machines). He was a trainee on O&G operations and exploration at Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC) summer school in 2009. He has worked at different times since 2000 in the Manufacturing Industry, Communication Industry, Academics and the Renewable Energy Industry. He was part of the team that designed and executed several government and individual solar powered projects in Nigeria.He joined the EPS lab as a research assistant in fall 2017 for his PhD under Dr. Arif Sarwat. His research interest include High PV Penetration and aggregation, Smart Grid, Power Electronics, Electrical Machines and Drives.

Email:  tolow003@fiu.edu

Asadullah Khalid received his Bachelors degree from the Aligarh Muslim University, India (2013) and his M.S. degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago (2015), both in Electrical Engineering. From 2014 to 2017, he worked in the Wireless/Consumer Electronics (Motorola) and Automotive (Nissan) industries. As an Electronics Engineer at Nissan, he was involved in design, development and release of electronic accessories on all Nissan and Infiniti classes and grades. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Florida International University, USA. His research interests include Power Electronics, Battery Management Systems, Smart Grid Communications and Renewable Energy Systems.

Email:  akhal032@fiu.edu

Hassan Jafari received his B.S. degree from University of Tabriz, tabriz, Iran, in 2008, and his M.S. degree from Amirkabir University of Technology (tehran polytechnic) both in Electrical Engineering. From 2011 to 2017, He worked in a real HV power grid as protective relays expert, some of his duties were Commissioning, installation, and operation of HV power grid substations, Programming and installation of various protective relays. He joined to EPS group since 2018 and is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Florida International University, USA. His research interests include Multi-Mode control of Micro-Grid, power electronics, and wireless power transfer.

                                                                   Email:hjafa002@fiu.edu          Link:google scholar

Aditya Sundararajan pursued his Master’s and Ph.D. at the Energy, Power & Sustainability (EPS) Group in FIU’s ECE department. As a graduate researcher at EPS, Aditya was partially funded by the NSF CAREER program (1553494) for Dr. Arif Sarwat and he was involved in conducting research on machine learning, artificial intelligence and data analytics for challenges in smart grid situation awareness and renewable integration. Under the mentorship of Dr. Sarwat, Aditya published his research in renowned journals and conference proceedings during the course of his degrees. One of the papers he co-authored with Dr. Sarwat also won the best paper award at the Resilience Week in 2017. Aditya also underwent an internship at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in 2018. Aditya is considering multiple offers from the U.S. Department of Energy national labs in the areas of power systems, data-driven analytics, and cybersecurity. He would be joining one of the federal labs as a full time employee.

Email:  asund005@fiu.edu  Links: Google Scholar | LinkedIn

Yemeserach Mekonnen received her Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Florida International University. As a graduate researcher, she was partially funded by the NSF CAREER program (1553494) and her research interest directed at the intersection of food-energy-water nexus, computational modeling of interdependent systems, wireless sensor networks, energy poverty, and renewable energy applications. She was the recipient of the McKnight Doctoral Fellowship and NSF Bridge to the Doctorate Fellowship. Yemeserach has interned with NASA Johnson Space Center under the Human Research Directory as a space system hardware engineer. She has also interned as an electrical engineer with The Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo, CA, supporting the Electronics and Power system and Civil and Commercial group. Yemeserach is joining Applied Physics Laboratory – Johns Hopkins University after graduation.

Email:  ymeko001@fiu.edu

Masood Moghaddami received his B.S. degree from the Amirkabir University of Technology(Tehran Polytechnic), Iran, in 2008, and his M.S. degree from the Iran University of Science and Technology, both in Electrical Engineering. From 2010 to 2014, he worked in the industry and developed several software packages for the design of electric machinery-based Finite Element Methods (FEM). He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Florida International University, USA. His research interests include numerical analysis of electrical machinery, power electronics, renewable energy systems and contact-less power transfer.

Email:  mmogh003@fiu.edu

Longfei Wei received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Applied Mathematics from Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin, China. He is currently working towards his PhD degree in Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Florida International University under the supervision of Dr. Arif Sarwat. His current research includes numerical optimization, game theory and cyber-physical security in Smart Grid.

Email:  lwei004@fiu.edu   Link: Google Scholar

Shahinur Rahman is a Graduate Research Assistant, pursuing her PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Department of ECE in Florida International University under the supervision of Dr. Arif Sarwat. She received her B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology (BUET) in 2014 and 2017 respectively. Her research area includes Power quality and Protection issues of Photovoltaic integration into the Smart Grid at distribution level.

Email:  srahm026@fiu.edu

Mohamadsaleh Jafari received his B.S. degree from Shahrood University of Technology, Iran, in 2010, and his M.S. degree from Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), both in Electrical Engineering. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Florida International University, USA. His research interests contain power system protection, renewable energy, Networked Cyber-Physical Systems.

Email:  mjafa006@fiu.edu