Dr. Mehdi Ganji

Smart City R&D Committee Chair, IEEE
Vice President, Willdan Energy Solutions

Mehdi Ganji is IEEE Smart City R&D Committee Chair and leads Willdan's Smart Cities Team, expanding the knowledge of smart grid across the company -- with emphasis on power system grid resilience, reliability, and decarbonization. Dr. Ganji has been the Principal Investigator of a number of microgrid projects in the State of New York (NY PRIZE), Massachusetts, and California. He is the technical lead for the Southern California Edison Red-Cross Shelter microgrid. Currently, he is leading the Smart Campus project in Ankara, Turkey.

As an executive advisor to Galvin Center for Electricity Innovation at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, Mehdi has worked on more than 30 smart grid research and implementation projects focused on the development of microgrid planning and operation applications for different market segments, and identification of the various microgrid business models. His areas of interest include microgrid applications at untapped market segments, data analytics and its role in Smart Cities applications, electric vehicle integration, transactive energy, and energy management systems. He has been actively engaged in several technical and industrial working groups such as IEEE1547, IEEE2030.7&8 and the State of California Microgrid Commercialization Roadmap and Vehicle Grid Integration.