Javad Khazaei
Lehigh University, PA·Engineering·Early-career
The power grid is changing fast. Solar panels, wind turbines and batteries connect to the grid through inverters, electronic devices that convert their power.
- Fields
Engineering
Computer Science
- Topics
power systems
smart grid
distributed energy resources
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through Mar 2031
What they work on
- Learn low-dimensional manifolds from time-series measurements of distributed energy resources and use them for real-time predictive control of voltage, frequency and power sharing in microgrids.
- Build probabilistic latent-space models that handle noisy, missing or limited sensor data, and a distributed coordination layer that lets energy devices cooperate using only local communication, validated on microgrid testbeds.
- Model how hyperscale AI data center workloads, cooling and backup power interact with inverter-based generation, to map stability limits and outage mechanisms such as frequency instability and cascading trips.
- Develop coordinated control of data center demand, cooling, storage and inverters, plus predictive detection and mitigation of load-altering cyberattacks targeting data center operations.
- Assess the market potential of a SCADA-integrated, machine-learning digital twin that predicts power system failures and evaluates corrective actions in real time, through industry customer discovery.
More about the research
They are replacing large spinning power plants. Meanwhile, huge data centers for cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI) are becoming major electricity users. These shifts make the grid harder to model and control, and they open new routes to failures and cyberattacks. The research develops data-driven and model-based tools to keep such grids stable, controllable and resilient.
Why it matters
As AI data centers and renewable energy grow, utilities, hospitals, military sites and data centers face more risk of outages and cyber-physical attacks. This work could give grid operators better ways to predict failures, run microgrids rich in renewables, and plan data center connections. The aim is to reduce outages and recovery times without replacing existing equipment.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
CAREER: Geometry-based Control of Nonlinear Distributed Energy Resources in Smart Grids
NSF · Apr 2026 – Mar 2031
Stability at the Edge: Cyber-Physical Risks and Control of Hyperscale Data Centers in Future Inverter-Dominated Grids
NSF · Jul 2026 – Jun 2029
I-Corps: Translation Potential of a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA)-Integrated, Digital Twin for Real-Time Resilience Assessment of Power Infrastructure
NSF · Sep 2026 – Aug 2027
Closest labs
Wencong Su
University of Michigan-Dearborn, MI·Engineering
Build a fundamental understanding of the practical challenges facing low-inertia power grids with high penetration of grid-forming inverter-based energy resources, which set grid voltage and frequency themselves.
Jan Kleissl
University of California-San Diego, CA·Engineering
Build DERConnect, a remote-access testbed that integrates solar panels, battery storage, electric vehicles, wind and solar emulators, and controllable building lighting and HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) systems.
Dominic Gross
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Engineering·Early-career
Develop a control design and stability analysis framework for grid-forming inverters that explicitly accounts for the static and dynamic limits of power electronics and renewable generation in zero-carbon power systems.
The school
Lehigh University: 13 labs on PI Pages, $62M a year on research, 99 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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