Dr. Hassan Farhangi is Director of Research within the Technology Centre of British Columbia Institute of Technology in Burnaby, BC, and Adjunct Professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and Simon Fraser University (SFU). Dr. Farhangi is the chief system architect and the Principal Investigator of BCIT’s Smart Microgrid at its Burnaby Campus in Vancouver, British Columbia, and the Scientific Director and Principal Investigator of NSERC Smart MicroGrid Network (NSMG-Net). He has published and presented numerous papers in scientific journals and conferences in Smart Grid and is a member of various international standardization committees such as IEC CSC TC57 WG17 (IEC 61850), Cigre WG C6.21 (Smart Metering) and Cigre WG C6.22 (Microgrids Evolution). A frequent keynote speaker at various international Smart Grid conferences, Dr. Farhangi has more than 25 years of experience in academic and applied research. Before joining BCIT, he served as Chief Technical Officer (CTO) of a number of companies involved in the design and development of systems, components and solutions for the Smart Grid. Dr. Farhangi is a member of Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of British Columbia (APEG), and a senior member of Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE).

On the Design of Smart Grids

Dr. Alberto Leon-Garcia is Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto. Professor Leon-Garcia is recognized as an innovator in networking research and education.   From 1999 to 2002, Prof. Leon-Garcia was founder and CTO of AcceLight Networks where he led the development an all-optical fabric multi-terabit, multiservice core switch. He holds several patents and has published research extensively in the areas of switch architecture and traffic management. His current research is focused on application platforms, software-defined infrastructure, extended cloud computing and smart infrastructure. He is currently Scientific Director of the NSERC Strategic Network for Smart Applications on Virtual Infrastructures (SAVI) which involves nine Canadian universities.  He is author of the leading textbook Probability and Random Processes for Electrical Engineering, and co-author of the textbook Communication Networks: Fundamental Concepts and Key Architecture.