Dr. Mladen Kezunovic, Eugene E. Webb and Regents Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University, was honored as the recipient of the CIGRE Philip Sporn Award.
The award was presented at the annual luncheon meeting of the CIGRE United States National Committee (USNC), which was held at the Hilton in Atlanta on Aug. 6. The Philip Sporn award is the USNC’s highest award and was established in 1989 to recognize recipients for “cumulative career contributions to the advancement of the concept of system integration in the theory, design and/or operation of large high-voltage electric systems in the United States.” Recipients must be actively involved with CIGRE.
Kezunovic, who is director of the Smart Grid Center and site director of the Power Systems Engineering Research Center (PSERC) consortium, was also named a 2018 CIGRE Distinguished Member, a 2014 CIGRE Fellow and an honorary member. Other CIGRE recognitions include the Atwood Associate Award in 2008 and a CIGRE Study Committee, Protection and Automation Award in 2012. He was also recently reappointed by the U.S. secretary of energy to serve a second term on the Department of Energy Electricity Advisory Committee.
His research expertise is in protective relaying, automated power system disturbance analysis, computational intelligence, data analytics and smart grids. He has contributed seminal work in the areas of automated fault analysis, predictive outage management and life-cycle test approaches for synchrophasor systems. He has also served as a consultant to over 50 companies worldwide. Kezunovic has been a principal investigator on over 150 research and development projects, published more than 550 papers and has given over 120 invited lectures, short courses and seminars around the world.