Panelist at the Welcome Celebration at Akamai Technologies’ Headquarters and 2024 IEEE Medal in Power Engineering
Dr. Deepak Divan does research in the areas of power electronics, power systems, smart grids, and distributed control of power systems. He works closely with utilities and industry and is actively involved in research, teaching, and entrepreneurship. He has around 400 published refereed papers and over 85 issued and pending patents. Dr. Divan has started several companies, including Varentec in Santa Clara, CA, which was funded by leading green-tech Venture Capital firm Khosla Ventures and renowned investor Bill Gates. He has founded or seeded several new ventures including GridBlock, GigaGrid, Soft Switching Technologies, Innovolt, Varentec and Smart Wires, which together have raised >$500M in venture funding.
Dr. Divan is an elected Member of the US National Academy of Engineering, member of the National Academies Board on Energy and Environmental Systems and was a member of the National Academies (NASEM) Committee on The Future of Electric Power in the United States. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, past President of the IEEE Power Electronics Society, is a recipient of the IEEE William E Newell Field Medal and IEEE Hingorani Custom Power Medal, and was the International Chair of the IEEE Empower a Billion Lives (EBL) recurring global competition to develop scalable energy access solutions. He was an invitee to the White House Electrification Summit in 2022 and has presented on the subject of electric grids around the world, including at the COP-22 meeting in Morocco in 2016 and the United Nations Global Solutions Summit in 2023. He received his B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from IIT Kanpur in India, and his MS and PhD degrees from the University of Calgary, Canada.