Keynote Speakers

Keynote Speakers

Ambrish Chandra

Ambrish Chandra received Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) degree from the University of Roorkee (presently IIT Roorkee), M. Tech. from IIT Delhi, both in India, and Ph.D. from University of Calgary, Canada, in 1977,1980, and 1987, respectively. Before joining as an Associate Professor at École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS), Montreal, in 1994, he worked as an Associate Professor at IIT Roorkee. Since 1999, he is a full professor of Electrical Engineering at ÉTS. From 2012-15, he was the director of multidisciplinary graduate program on Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency at ÉTS. Presently, he is the director of master program in electrical engineering.

The innovative technologies and engineering solutions proposed by Dr. Chandra have brought key and enabling differentiation because of their simplicity and practicality.  The primary focus of his work is related to the advancement of new theory and control algorithms for power electronic converters for the power quality improvement in distribution systems and for the integration of renewable energy sources. He is a co-author of more than 470 research articles, and also a co-author of John Wiley book ‘Power Quality – Problems and Mitigation Techniques’. His work has had a significant impact and is now extensively referred by engineers and researchers around the world, as evident by total Google Scholar citations of more than 26 500, h-index of 67, and i10-index of 306. He has been General Chair/Finance Chair of many International IEEE conferences. He has been the member of many IEEE committees, including the Chair of prestigious International IEEE Nikola Tesla Award Committee.  He has been the Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE Power and Energy Society and IEEE Industry Application Society. He has been invited to give Distinguished Lectures/Keynote Speeches in 35 countries.

He is Fellow of many organizations, including Life Fellow IEEE, Canadian Academy of Engineering (FCAE), Engineering Institute of Canada (FEIC), Institute of Engineering and Technology, U.K. (FIET), Institution of Engineers, India (FIE), and the Institution of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers, India (FIETE), and registered as a Professional Engineer in the province of Quebec. 

He is the recipient of ‘IEEE Canada Inaugural P. Ziogas Electric Power Award 2018’, ‘IEEE Power and Energy Society Nari Hingorani Custom Power Award 2021’, ‘Distinguished Alumnus Award 2022’, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India, and ‘IETE – Bimal Bose Award 2024’, Institution of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers, India, and IEEE Montreal Gold Medal Award for Life Time Achievements 2024.

 Milos Manic

Milos Manic (Fellow, IEEE) received the Dipl.Ing. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of Niš, Niš, Serbia, in 1991 and 1997, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in computer science fron the University of Idaho, in 2003.,He is currently a Professor with the Computer Science Department, the Director of VCU Cybersecurity Center, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA, and the Director of Commonwealth Center for Advanced Computing. He has completed more than 50 research grants in AI/ML in cyber and energy and intelligent controls. He authored more than 200 refereed articles, holds several U.S. patents.,Dr. Manic was the recipient of the 2018 R&D 100 Award for Autonomic Intelligent Cyber Sensor (AICS).

He is an inductee of the U.S. National Academy of Inventors (S/M 2023/2019) and a Fellow of Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (specialty in AI & Cybersecurity). He is an IEEE IES President (2024–2025). He was also a recipient of IEEE IES 2019 Anthony J. Hornfeck Service Award, 2012 J. David Irwin Early Career Award, 2017 IEM Best Paper Award, an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, Open Journal of Industrial Electronics Society, and Senior Life AdCom member. He was Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, was a founding chair of IEEE Industrial Electronics Society Technical Committee on Resilience and Security in Industry, and was a general chair of IEEE International Conference on Industrial Technology 2023, IEEE International Conference on Human System Interaction 2019, and IEEE IECON 2018.

Sairaj Dhople

Sairaj Dhople received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007, 2009, and 2012. He is currently the Oscar A. Schott Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Minnesota. His research interests include modeling, analysis, and control of power electronics and power systems with a focus on renewable integration.

Dr. Dhople was the recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2015 and the Outstanding Young Engineer Award from the IEEE Power and Energy Society in 2019. He has also received the 2021 IEEE Power and Energy Society Prize Paper Award and the 2022 IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics (Second Place) Prize Paper Award.

Vinod Khadkikar

Prof. Khadkikar is an IEEE Fellow (Class of 2022, “for contributions to power quality solutions”). He is Co-Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics and a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Industry Applications Society. He has been IEEE IAS Fellow Evaluation committee member.

He received B.E. in Electrical, Electronics and Power from the Government College of Engineering, Aurangabad, in 2000, M. Tech. from IIT Delhi in 2002 and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the ETS, Montreal, Canada, in 2008.

From December 2008 to March 2010, Dr. he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada. From April 2010 to December 2010, he was a Visiting Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.

Currently he is a Professor of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, UAE. He joined Masdar Institute (now Khalifa University) in 2010 as an Assistant Professor. He has contributed over 75 IEEE Transactions papers. He was ranked 142 among 106,000 researchers in Electrical and Electronic Engineering in the list of world’s top 2% of career-long scientists as of September 2022 released by Stanford University.

He has been serving as Scientist Member in the Mohammed bin Rashid Academy of Scientists (MBRAS) since 2018. At Khalifa University, he has been Power Electronics Theme Lead at the Advanced Power and Energy Center (APEC), Space Power and Energy Storage Theme Lead at the Khalifa University Space Technology and Innovation Centre (KUSTIC) and Theme Lead at Virtual Research Institute (VRI) for Sustainable Energy Production, Storage, and Utilization (funded by ASPIRE).

Dr. Khadkikar is currently an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications and IET Power Electronics.

Srikanth Chandrasekaran

Srikanth Chandrasekaran

Country Head & Senior Director – IEEE India

Global Practice Lead, Foundational Technologies, IEEE Standards Association

Sri has been associated with the IEEE since 2012 and heads the business operations for IEEE in India. Through his practice Sri focus’s on developing key standardisation programs in emerging areas building end-to-end trustworthy devices and systems with emphasis on cybersecurity, identity and privacy. Sri also heads the standardization efforts for the Asia Pacific region. Sri and his team in India drive the IEEE Blended Learning Program (BLP) initiative, an eLearning platform, focused on bridging skills gap for students and lateral skilling of industry professionals.

Prior to joining IEEE, Sri was associated with Freescale Semiconductor Inc. (formerly Motorola Inc.) for 17 years, focused on Electronic Design Automation.

Sri received the Accellera Technical Excellence Award in 2009 for his leadership and contributions to design automation standardisation. Sri holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from Madras University, India and Master’s degree in Electrical Communication from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India.

Hatem Zeineldin

Hatem Zeineldin
Khalifa University, Abudhabi, UAE

Prof. Hatem Zeineldin received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Electrical Power and Machines from Cairo University in 1999 and 2002, respectively. He obtained his PhD degree in 2006 from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at University of Waterloo. In 2006, he joined Smith and Andersen Electrical Inc. as an electrical engineer where he was involved in several projects related to distributed generation. During that period, Dr. Zeineldin was also hired as a research consultant for a research project that was funded by Natural Resources Canada that focused on protection planning with renewable energy sources. In 2007, Dr. Zeineldin worked as a visiting professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he focused on developing new methods for islanding detection of renewable energy sources.

In 2007, Dr. Zeineldin joined Masdar Institute and served as the Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Dr. Zeineldin is currently a Professor and chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering at Khalifa University. He is the recipient of a couple of awards including University of Waterloo President’s Graduate Scholarship, Ontario Graduate Scholarship and Faculty of Engineering Scholarship. His main research interests include distribution system protection, islanding detection, micro-grids and smart grid design.

Subhransu Ranjan Samantaray

Subhransu Ranjan Samantaray (Senior Member, IEEE) received the B.Tech. degree from UCE Burla, Sambalpur, India, the Ph.D. degree from NIT Rourkela, Rourkela, India and the Postdoctoral degree from McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada. He is currently the Professor, OPTCL Chair Professor and Head of the School of Electrical and Computer Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar, India. His research interests include PMU and wide area measurement, intelligent protection for transmission systems including FACTs, Micro-grid protection including distributed generation, micro-grid planning, wide-area based dynamic security assessment in large power networks and smart-grid technologies.

He was the recipient of the prestigious SERB STAR Award-2021, Director’s Commendation for Outstanding Research-2021, IEEE PES Chapter Outstanding Engineer Award-2020, NASI-SCOPUS Young Scientists Awards-2015, IEEE PES Technical Committee Prize Paper Award-2012, Samanta Chandra Escher Award, Odisha Bigyana Acadmey in 2010, Young Engineers Award-IEI (Institute of Engineers, India) in 2009, Innovative Doctoral Thesis Award-Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE) -2008, Young Scientists Award, Odisha Bigyana Acadmey, Dept. of Science and Technology, Govt. of Odisha) in 2007 etc.,He was an Associate Editor for IEEE Systems Journal, Editor of IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, Associate Editor for IET, Generation, Transmission & Distribution and Guest Editor of IEEE Sensor Journal. He is currently a Member of the IEEE Task Force on Big-Data Analytics for Synchro-Waveform Measurements and IEEE Power Systems Stability Sub-Committee.,He is a Fellow of Indian National Academy of Engineering (FNAE) and Institution of Engineering and Technology (FIET), U.K.