Energy Systems Transition: Digitalization, Decarbonization, Decentralization and Democratization

Vahid Vahidinasab, Ph.D., is a Senior Electrical Power Engineering Lecturer and Director of GridLab at Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK, where he leads teaching and research in the area of sustainable power and energy systems. Before that, he was an Assistant Professor at Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran, and a Senior Research Associate at the EPSRC National Centre for Energy Systems Integration at Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, where he worked with the EU Horizon 2020 inteGRIDy project and Active Building Centre Research Programme. He has demonstrated a consistent track record of attracting external funds and managing industrial projects and closely worked with 13 large and complex national/international projects. From 2011 to 2018, he held a number of leadership roles at Shahid Beheshti University and the Niroo Research Institute. His research works have been funded by the UK EPSRC, EU-H2020, Horizon Europe, industry partners, and local utilities. His research interests include power and energy systems modelling, analysis, operation and control, energy systems integration, power systems and grids resilience, smart grids and microgrids, and distributed energy systems. Dr. Vahidinasab is the Editor-in-Chief of the Springer journal Technology and Economics of Smart Grids and Sustainable Energy and an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications. He is also a member of the Editorial Board and a Subject Editor for IET Generation, Transmission and Distribution, and an Associate Editor of of IET Smart Grid, Nature Scientific Reports, and IEEE Access.

Behnam Mohammadi-Ivatloo, Ph.D., is an advisory board member of Information Technology Research and Application canter, Istanbul Ticaret University, Istanbul, Turkey. He is also a Professor at the University of Tabriz, where he leads the Smart Energy Systems Lab. Before joiningthe University of Tabriz, he was a research associate at the Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy at the University of Calgary. He obtained MSc and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the Sharif University of Technology. He has a mix of high-level experience in research, teaching, administration, and voluntary jobs at the national and international levels. He was PI or Co-PI in 20 externally funded research projects. He has been a Senior Member of the IEEE since 2017 and a Member of the Governing Board of the Iran Energy Association since 2013, where he was elected as President in 2019. He is included in the 2018-2021 Thomson Reuters’ list of the top 1% most cited researchers. His main areas of interest are integrated energy systems, renewable energies, energy storage systems, microgrid systems, and smart grids.