Saifur Rahman, professor of electrical and computer engineering in the College of Engineering and director of the Advanced Research Institute, National Capital Region, at Virginia Tech, was recently reappointed the Joseph R. Loring Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering by Virginia Tech President Timothy D. Sands and Executive Vice President and Provost Thanassis Rikakis.

The Joseph R. Loring Professorship of Electrical and Computer Engineering was established by Joseph R. Loring of Arlington, Virginia, in 2003 to support research excellence. A 1947 graduate of the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Loring founded Joseph R. Loring and Associates Inc., now called LORING, a worldwide engineering firm headquartered in New York. The appointment is for five years.

Rahman has held the Loring Professorship since 2005.

A member of the Virginia Tech community since 1979, Rahman is an internationally known researcher in the areas electrical power, renewable energy, and smart grid.

His interests and contributions over the last five years have ranged from pioneering work in smart grids, grid integration of large-scale wind and solar photovoltaic power systems to his recent work on energy efficiency for which he received a $2 million contract from the U.S. Department of Energy in 2013.

Rahman is also active in other research including digital libraries to critical infrastructure protection. He consults on these topics and lectures and offers short courses for a wide variety of government agencies, the World Bank, United Nations programs, non-government organizations, and domestic and foreign electric utility companies.

Over the last five years Rahman has received almost $6 million in grants to support his research and has published 16 conference papers, 13 journal papers and given 25 keynote speeches and 91 invited presentations in more than 20 countries. In 2014, under his leadership, Virginia Tech’s Advanced Research Institute supported Dominion Virginia Power to win a $47 million U.S. Department of Energy contract to develop the multi-megawatt wind turbine facility off the coast of Virginia.

Rahman is a Fellow of the IEEE and received the IEEE Millennium Medal in 2000 for outstanding achievements and contributions to IEEE. In 2014 he was named to the IEEE Technical Activities Board Hall of Honor “for sustained contributions to quality improvements of IEEE publications and development of processes for diverse publication products.”

Rahman has organized a number of major conferences, including chairing the IEEE Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Conferences in Washington, D.C. in 2013, 2014, and 2015, and the Asia Pacific Power and Energy Conference held in several cities in China in 2010, 2011, and 2012.

Rahman’s teaching excellence is well known. He has developed eight new courses at levels ranging from the undergraduate to graduate level. He has supervised 20 Ph.D. and 33 master’s degree thesis students to completion. He is currently supervising 12 Ph.D. and three master’s degree students. He has developed numerous short courses for continuing education.

Rahman received his bachelor's degree from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, a master's degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and a Ph.D. from Virginia Tech.

Dedicated to its motto, Ut Prosim (That I May Serve), Virginia Tech takes a hands-on, engaging approach to education, preparing scholars to be leaders in their fields and communities. As the commonwealth’s most comprehensive university and its leading research institution, Virginia Tech offers 240 undergraduate and graduate degree programs to more than 31,000 students and manages a research portfolio of $513 million. The university fulfills its land-grant mission of transforming knowledge to practice through technological leadership and by fueling economic growth and job creation locally, regionally, and across Virginia.

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