Dr. Ahmed Al-Durra received his BSc, MSc, and PhD in ECE from Ohio State University in 2005, 2007, and 2010, respectively (with Summa Cum laude in all three degrees). He was granted a full scholarship from the Distinguished Student Scholarship of the Presidential Office to study the bachelors in the USA as one of the top 20 UAE high school achievers in 2000. In 2005, he obtained the International Engineering Consortium Award for the top graduating student in Electrical & Computer Engineering Department, 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. In 2020, he was promoted to Professor at the Electrical Engineering & Computer Science Department, Khalifa University of Science & Technology, 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 7M USD). 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. He has one US patent, one edited book, 12 book chapters, and over 240 scientific articles in top-tier journals (mostly Q1-Journals) and refereed international conference proceedings. He has supervised/co-supervised over 30 PhD/Master 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, IET Renewable Power Generation, and Frontiers in Energy Research. 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 鈥� UAE Scientists (2018), and he is the winner of the prestigious Khalifa Award for Education - Distinguished University Professor in Scientific Research (2018-2019). He was awarded the Faculty Research Excellence Award-Khalifa University, 2020.
