Enhancing grid resilience towards net-zero

Dean Sharafi
Strategic Advisor-Energy Transition
Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO)

Dean Sharafi is the Strategic Advisor on energy transition at the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO). Dean holds a degree in Applied Physics, a degree in Electrical Engineering and a degree in Business Management. He has around 30 years of experience in power system engineering which includes Power System Protection, High Voltage Systems, Asset Management and Power System and Electricity Market Operation. He is a member of Australian Institute of Management, Cigre, Engineers Australia and a senior member the IEEE. Dean has been actively involved with IEEE Power and Energy Society initiatives and Cigre Working Groups over the last two decades and served as a member of the Governing Board of the IEEE PES from 2017 to 2022 and is currently the PES Treasurer. Dean is also an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Power Systems Journal and an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer.

Dr. Mohammad Mohammadi
Senior Engineer - Future Energy Systems
Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO)

Mohammad is a Senior Engineer in the Future Energy Systems group at the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), specialising in sector coupling, power system analysis and planning studies. His recent work involves contributing to system security transition planning and leading several programs to assess the performance of grid-forming (GFM) battery energy storage systems (BESS), as well as quantifying system services like synthetic inertia from GFM BESS to support the transition to a low-carbon future. Mohammad holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Melbourne. In addition to his industry work, he is actively involved in collaborations with the research community, including serving as a topic lead in AEMO’s research priorities on modelling and interconnection of large loads and CSIRO’s AR-PST. His research has been published in over 20 journal papers and book chapters, and he has received several awards, such as Young Power Engineer of the Year (2025) from the Electric Energy Society of Australia.

Prof. Pierluigi Mancarella
Energy Systems Program Leader, Melbourne Energy Institute 
Chair Professor of Electrical Power Systems
University of Melbourne

Professor Pierluigi Mancarella is the Chair Professor of Electrical Power Systems at the University of Melbourne and Professor of Smart Energy Systems at the University of Manchester, UK. His key research interests include technoeconomic modelling and analysis of multi-energy systems, grid integration of renewables and distributed energy resources, energy infrastructure planning under uncertainty, and security, reliability, and resilience of low-carbon networks.

Pierluigi is the Energy Systems Program Leader at the Melbourne Energy Institute, a Fellow of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), an IEEE Power and Energy Society Distinguished Lecturer, the Convenor of the CIGRE (International Council of Large Electric Systems) C6/C2.34 Working Group on “Flexibility Provision from Distributed Energy Resources”, holds the 2017 veski innovation fellowship for his work on urban-scale virtual power plants, and is a recipient of the international Newton Prize 2018 for his work on power system resilience in Chile. He is author of several books and over 300 research papers and reports and is a Senior Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, and the Oxford Open Energy journal.

Pierluigi is the Australian principal investigator of the US-UK-Australia Global Center in Climate Change and Clean Energy “EPICS” (“Electric Power Innovation for a Carbon-free Society”). In the past few years, he has supported the Finkel Review panel, the Australian Energy Market Operator, the Australian Energy Market Commission, and the Australian Energy Regulator on relevant research and consultancy projects on power system security, reliability, and resilience, and has led and been involved in several projects via the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, Cooperative Research Centres, and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.