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. He is now the Associate Provost for Research in Khalifa University.

Most research interests for a scientist

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.

Specialization

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.