Biography

Dr. Arif Sarwat has over 20 years of combined experience in industry (Siemens) and academia. He is a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the Director of Engineering for Industry and Research Collaborations, and the Director of the FPL-FIU Solar Research Facility and the Energy, Power, Sustainability & Intelligence (EPSi) group at Florida International University (FIU). He also serves as the Principal Investigator for the state-of-the-art grid-connected 3MW/9MWh AI-based Fuel Agnostic (AIR) Microgrid long-term project. His research interests include smart grids, electric vehicles, grid resiliency, data center design and reliability, quantum computing in energy systems, agentic AI for intelligent grid operation, fuel-agnostic microgrids and controls, energy storage and battery management systems, large language models (LLMs) for power systems, and cryptography for secure energy networks.

Dr. Sarwat has published more than 275 peer-reviewed articles and holds multiple patents. His research has been consistently funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy (DOE), and various industry partners, including the prestigious NSF CAREER Award. Prior to joining academia, he worked at Siemens for over nine years, earning three recognition awards for excellence. He is the author and co-author of several award-winning publications, including the Best Paper Award at Resilience Week 2017, the Best Paper and Most Cited Paper Awards (2016 and 2018, respectively) from Springer’s Journal of Modern Power Systems and Clean Energy (MPCE), the Second-Best Paper Award at the IEEE NAPS Conference in 2020, and the Best Paper Award at IAS IACC 2023. Dr. Sarwat has received multiple institutional honors, including the FIU Faculty Award for Excellence in Research & Creative Activities (2016), the College of Engineering & Computing Worlds Ahead Performance Award (2016), and the FIU Top Scholar Award in 2015, 2019, and 2023. He has also served as the Chair and Secretary of the IEEE Miami Section Vehicular Technology (VT) and Communications Society since 2012. For further information, please visit: http://www.eps.fiu.edu.

Noteworthy Awards

• Distinguished University Professor, FIU, 2025
• Board Member, Research Foundation, FIU
• FIU Top Scholar Award, 2023
• Best Paper Award, IAS IACC, 2023
• CEC Faculty Mentorship Awardee, 2022
• Second-Best Paper Award, IEEE NAPS Conference, 2020
• FIU Top Scholar Award, 2019
• Most Cited Paper Award, Journal of Modern Power Systems and Clean Energy (MPCE), 2018
• Best Paper Award, Journal of Modern Power Systems and Clean Energy (MPCE), 2016
• NSF CAREER Award, 2016
• Faculty Award for Excellence in Research & Creative Activities, 2016
• College of Engineering & Computing Worlds Ahead Performance Award, 2016
• Best Paper Award, Resilience Week, 2017
• FIU Top Scholar Award, 2015

Recent Journal Publications

• Olowu, Temitayo O., et al. "Optimal and Coordinated DER Control for Resiliency Improvement Considering Generation and Load Uncertainties During Extreme Events." IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications (2025).
• Behnamfar, Milad, and Arif Sarwat. "Suppressing Voltage Fluctuations with Optimized Assisted Coils in Dynamic Wireless Power Transfer." IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics (2025).
• Behnamfar, Milad, Temitayo O. Olowu, and Arif Sarwat. "Passivity-Based Integral Terminal Sliding Mode Control for Suppressing Output Voltage Fluctuations in Dynamic Wireless Charging." IEEE Transactions on Transportation Electrification (2025).
• Roy, Sukanta, and Arif Sarwat. "A Noise Immune Physics Informed Data-Driven Digital Twin for Inverter Component Degradation Estimation." IEEE Access (2025).
• Roy, Sukanta, et al. "Data-Driven Digital Twin for Reliability Assessment of DC/DC Buck Converter." IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics (2024).
• Parvez, Imtiaz, et al. "A Novel Authentication Management for the Data Security of Smart Grid." IEEE Open Access Journal of Power and Energy 11 (2024): 218–230.
• Stevenson, Alexander, Hugo Riggs, and Arif Sarwat. "Data-driven scheduling of a grid-connected university campus battery energy storage system considering variable weather and energy pricing." Energy Reports 12 (2024): 5116–5132.
• Khalid, Asadullah, Alexander Stevenson, and Arif I. Sarwat. "Overview of technical specifications for grid-connected microgrid battery energy storage systems." IEEE Access 9 (2021): 163554–163593.

Recent Conference Papers

• Roy, Sukanta, and Arif Sarwat. "Unsupervised Detection of Mixed Power Quality Events at the Grid Edge Using Feature-Engineered Discrete Wavelet Transform." 2025 IEEE Industry Applications Society Annual Meeting (IAS), IEEE, 2025.
• Stevenson, Alexander, Hugo Riggs, and Arif Sarwat. "Comparison of Long-Short Term Memory Models for Customer Outage Prediction Using Regional Time-Series Subtropical Weather Data." 2024 Conference on Renewable Energy Technologies and Modern Communications Systems: Future and Challenges, IEEE, 2024.
• Roy, Sukanta, et al. "Analysis of an 8-Year Field-Tested PV Module Deployed in a Subtropical Environment." 2024 6th International Conference on Smart Power & Internet Energy Systems (SPIES), IEEE, 2024.
• Behnamfar, Milad, and Arif Sarwat. "Integral Terminal Sliding Mode-Based Proportional Integral Control for Mitigating Output Voltage Fluctuation for Dynamic Wireless Charging." 2024 IEEE Industry Applications Society Annual Meeting (IAS), IEEE, 2024.
• Olowu, Temitayo O., et al. "Two-Timescale Control of Smart Inverters and Legacy Devices in Unbalanced Distribution Feeders." 2023 IEEE Industry Applications Society Annual Meeting (IAS), IEEE, 2023.

Labs Under the Directorship of Professor Sarwat

The Energy, Power & Sustainability (EPS) Group has full capability to develop projects from the ground up — from laboratory-scale simulations and verifications to field deployment and validation. The group operates a grid-tied network comprising a 1.4 MW photovoltaic (PV) power plant at FIU’s Engineering Center, a total of 4 MW distributed PV power plants at Daytona, and a 74.5 MW PV power plant in Miami. The Group has access to more than 30 feeders and sub-transmission lines where distributed energy resources (DERs) are installed at residential, commercial, and utility-scale levels. The Energy, Power & Sustainability (EPS) Group at FIU consists of multiple logically independent zones connected seamlessly.

Proactive Analytics and Data Oriented Research on Availability & Security (PANDORAS) Lab

The Center for Proactive ANalytics and Data-Oriented Research on Availability & Security (PANDORAS) is equipped with multicore central and general-purpose graphical processing units (GP-GPUs) integrated over a secure, isolated network. The lab includes a large-capacity data server, ten high-powered workstations, a GPU server for accelerated machine learning, and a multi-panel wall screen for monitoring. These resources are used for cybersecurity software development, data synthesis, and grid-edge analytics.

The center’s data collection covers photovoltaic (PV) production meters, inverter settings, frequency disturbance recorder readings, feeder relay configurations, and ten years of historical weather and cloud coverage data relevant to the PV systems. It also maintains a grid reliability cube. Additionally, PANDORAS replicates up to 20 GW of peak power generation serving approximately 6 million utility customers across 850+ distribution substations featuring diverse feeder topologies (radial, mesh, and loop). The lab is equipped with Advanced Distribution Management Systems (ADMS) as deployed by utilities, allowing real-world simulation and control studies.

PANDORAS conducts multi-level data processing — descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, prescriptive, and cognitive — to deliver actionable insights into real-time and near-real-time grid scenarios. These capabilities support utility operators in planning and decision-making at command and control centers.

Grid Energy Intelligence Exploration Research (GENIE) Lab

The Grid Energy Intelligence Exploration Research (GENIE) Lab serves as a state-of-the-art Control Room for AI-Renewable Microgrid research and hardware-in-the-loop real-time simulations. The lab houses OPAL-RT and LabVolt simulators along with the InTouch Wonderware system, providing a full suite of tools to test, simulate, and validate inverters, batteries, and other grid-connected equipment. GENIE Lab plays a crucial role in the development and validation of next-generation smart grid control architectures.

Visit the EPS Group site: http://www.eps.fiu.edu