Deepak Divan
Dr. Deepak Divan
Professor, John E Pippin Chair and GRA Eminent Scholar
Director, GT Center for Distributed Energy, ECE
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
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 over 250 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 >$160M 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 a member of the National Academies (NASEM) Committee on The Future of Electric Power in the United States. He 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 is 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.