Keynote Speakers

Prof. Sukumar Kamalasadan (Senior Member, IEEE) received the B.Tech. degree in electrical and electronics engineering from the University of Calicut, Calicut, India, in 1991, the M.Eng. degree in electric power system management from the Asian Institute of Technology, Klong Luang, Thailand, in 1999, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Toledo, Toledo, OH, USA, in 2004. He is Professor of Electrical Engineering in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and an Associate of the Energy Production and Infrastructure Center, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC, USA. He has more than 25 years of academic experience and seven years of industry experience and has authored or coauthored around 150 papers published in international journals and conference proceedings. His research interests include smart grid, microgrid, power system operation and optimization, power system dynamics, stability and control, and renewable-energy-based distributed generation. Dr. Kamalasadan is a Paper Review Chair and an Associate Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS. He was a recipient of several awards, including the National Science Foundation Faculty Early CAREER Award in 2008.

Prof. Kamalasadan is the Director, Power, Energy and Intelligent Systems Laboratory and Director, Duke Energy Smart Grid Laboratory. He is the Principal Investigator of the ReDis-PV project funded by U.S Department of Energy Solar Technologies Office. He is also a member of IEEE Power and Energy Society, IEEE Control Systems Society, IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, IEEE Power Electronics Society, and IEEE Industrial Applications Society.

Prof. (Dr.) Mohan Kolhe is with the University of Agder (Norway) as full professor in electrical energy engineering with focus in smart grid and renewable energy. He has also received the offer of Hafslund Professorship in Smart Grid from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). He has more than three decades’ academic experience at international level on electrical and renewable energy systems. He is a leading renewable energy technologist and has previously held academic positions at the world's prestigious universities e.g. University College London (UK / Australia), University of Dundee (UK); University of Jyvaskyla (Finland); and Hydrogen Research Institute, QC (Canada).

Prof. Kolhe was a member of the Government of South Australia’s Renewable Energy Board (2009-2011) and worked on developing renewable energy policies.

Prof. Kolhe's academic work ranges from the smart grid, grid integration of renewable energy systems, home energy management system, integrated renewable energy systems for hydrogen production, techno-economics of energy systems, solar and wind energy engineering, development of business models for distributed generation.

Prof. Kolhe has been successful in winning research funding from prestigious research councils (e.g. EPSRC, BBSRC, EU, NRP, etc.) for his work on sustainable energy systems. He has published extensively in the area of energy systems engineering. He has been invited by many international organizations for delivering expert lectures / courses / key note addresses. He has also been member of many academic promotional committees as well as expert member of international research councils.

Prof. Frede Blaabjerg (Fellow, IEEE) was with ABB-Scandia, Randers, Denmark, from 1987 to 1988. From 1988 to 1992, he got the PhD degree in Electrical Engineering at Aalborg University in 1995. He became an Assistant Professor in 1992, an Associate Professor in 1996, and a Full Professor of power electronics and drives in 1998. From 2017 he became a Villum Investigator. He is honoris causa at University Politehnica Timisoara (UPT), Romania and Tallinn Technical University (TTU) in Estonia.

His current research interests include power electronics and its applications such as in wind turbines, PV systems, reliability, harmonics and adjustable speed drives. He has published more than 600 journal papers in the fields of power electronics and its applications. He is the co-author of four monographs and editor of ten books in power electronics and its applications.

He has received 30 IEEE Prize Paper Awards, the IEEE PELS Distinguished Service Award in 2009, the EPE-PEMC Council Award in 2010, the IEEE William E. Newell Power Electronics Award 2014 and the Villum Kann Rasmussen Research Award 2014. He was the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS from 2006 to 2012. He has been Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE Power Electronics Society from 2005 to 2007 and for the IEEE Industry Applications Society from 2010 to 2011 as well as 2017 to 2018. In 2019-2020 he serves a President of IEEE Power Electronics Society. He is Vice-President of the Danish Academy of Technical Sciences too.

He is nominated in 2014-2018 by Thomson Reuters to be between the most 250 cited researchers in Engineering in the world.

Prof. Josep M. Guerrero (Fellow, IEEE) received the B.S. degree in telecommunications engineering, the M.S. degree in electronics engineering, and the Ph.D. degree in power electronics from the Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain, in 1997, 2000, and 2003, respectively. Since 2011, he has been a Full Professor with the Department of Energy Technology, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark, where he is responsible for the microgrid research program. His research interests include power electronics, distributed energy-storage systems, hierarchical and cooperative control, energy management systems, smart metering and the Internet of Things for ac/dc microgrids; recently specially focused on maritime microgrids for electrical ships, vessels, ferries and seaports. Prof. Guerrero is an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, and IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine, and an Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid.

Prof. Ambrish Chandra (Fellow, IEEE) received the B.E. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Roorkee (presently IITR), Roorkee, India, the M. Tech. degree in power apparatus and systems from IIT Delhi, New Delhi, India, and the Ph.D. degree in power system control from the University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada, in 1977, 1980, and 1987, respectively. He is a currently a Full Professor of Electrical Engineering with the École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS), Montréal, QC, Canada, since 1999. Before joining as an Associate Professor with ÉTS in 1994, he worked as a Faculty with the IITR. From 2012 to 2015, he was the Director of multidisciplinary graduate program on Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency with ÉTS. He is currently the Director of Master Program in Electrical Engineering. The primary focus of his work is related to the advancement of new theory and control algorithms for power electronic converters for power quality improvement in distribution systems and integration of renewable energy sources. He is the Co-Author of Power Quality – Problems and Mitigation Techniques (Wiley, 2015). Dr. Chandra is Fellow of many organizations, including Canadian Academy of Engineering, Institute of Engineering and Technology, U.K., Engineering Institute of Canada, etc., and registered as a Professional Engineer in Quebec. He is a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Power and Energy Society and the IEEE Industry Application Society. He is the recipient of IEEE Canada ‘P. Ziogas Electric Power Award 2018.

Prof. S. N. Singh (Fellow, IEEE) obtained his M. Tech. and Ph. D. in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, in 1989 and 1995, respectively. He was Vice Chancellor in Madan Mohan Malaviya University of Technology, Gorakhpur, India. Currently, Dr. Singh is Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India. He also worked as Visiting Professor at Denmark Technical University, Denmark. Before joining IIT Kanpur as Associate Professor, Dr Singh worked with UP SEB as Assistant Engineer from 1988 to 1996, with IIT Rookree as Assistant Professor from 1996 to 2001 and with AIT, Bangkok, Thailand as Assistant Professor from 2001 to 2003. Dr Singh received several awards including Young Engineer Award 2000 of Indian National Academy of Engineering, Khosla Research Award of IIT Roorkee, and Young Engineer Award of CBIP New Delhi (India), 1996. Prof Singh is receipt of Humboldt Fellowship of Germany and Otto-monsted Fellowship of Denmark. His research interests include power system restructuring, FACTS, power system optimization & control, security analysis, wind power, etc. Prof Singh is a Fellow of IETE India, Fellow of IEEE, USA, and a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers (India). Prof Singh has published more than 400 papers in International/national journals/conferences. He has also written two Books on Electric Power Generation, Transmission and Distribution and “Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering” published by PHI.

Prof. Ahmed Al-Durra received his B.Sc, M.Sc., and Ph.D. in ECE from Ohio State University in 2005, 2007, and 2010, respectively (with summa cum laude honors in all three degrees). He was granted a full scholarship from the Distinguished Student Scholarship of the Presidential Office to study is Bachelor's in the US as one of the top 20 UAE high-school achievers in 2000.

In 2005, Dr. Al-Durra obtained the International Engineering Consortium Award as the top graduating student in Electrical & Computer Engineering Department at Ohio State University. He joined the Electrical Engineering Department at the Petroleum Institute (PI), UAE, as an Assistant Professor in 2010; he was promoted to Associate Professor in 2015. In 2014, he obtained the PI Research & Scholarship Award for Junior Faculty, and he was elevated to the grade of IEEE Senior Member. Currently, Dr. Al-Durra is a Professor at the Electrical Engineering & Computer Science Department at Khalifa University, UAE.

His research interests are applications of control and estimation theory on power systems stability, micro and smart grids, renewable energy systems and integration, and process control. His ongoing efforts on renewable energy system areas focus on nonlinear control designs, real-time simulation, controller parameter optimization, as well as power and control hardware-in-the-loop testing. Furthermore, he has carried out extensive research in the power system optimization area. Recently, Dr. Al-Durra has been working on challenges, and research opportunities in the area of Transportation and Electrification. He has established an advance Hardware-in-the-Loop platform to study HEV Energy Management and system-level control strategies in addition to topics relevant to EV Smart Charging.

Dr. Al-Durra has accomplished and has been working on several research projects at international and national levels (exceeds $6 million). He has been an active member of the Petroleum Institute Research Center and participated heavily in the initiation of ADNOC Research & Innovative Center (ADRIC) as the Research Coordinator for Downstream Activities. He is the founder and head of the Energy Systems, Control & Optimization Lab at ADRIC and Industry Engagement Theme lead for the Advanced Power & Energy Center.

Dr. Al-Durra has one US patent, one edited book, 12 book chapters, and over 170 scientific articles in top-tier journals (mostly Q1-Journals) and refereed international conference proceedings. He has supervised/co-supervised over 25 Ph.D./Master's students. He is an Editor for IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy and IEEE Power Engineering Letters, and Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications and Frontiers in Energy Research – Smart Grids. He has served on technical program committees as well as organized and session chaired sessions in several international conferences (SPIES 2020, GreenTech 2020, IEEE IAS-AM 2019, SPIES 2019, IEEE IAS-AM 2018, ACEEE 2018, ICSEE 2018, IECON 2015, ASCC 2015). He has been invited for speeches by several governmental, industrial, and academic entities and presented in over 15 conferences, workshops, seminars, and forums. He was awarded the UAE Pioneers Award – UAE Scientists (2018), and he is the winner of the prestigious Khalifa Award for Education - Distinguished University Professor in Scientific Research (2018-2019).