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Khanbaghi, Maryam

Maryam Khanbaghi


Maryam Khanbaghi is the director of Power Systems and Sustainable Energy Program and an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Before joining Santa Clara University, she was at Corning Inc., holding several positions in research, engineering, and manufacturing. She created and led Corning’s first-ever advanced control group serving all Corning businesses with cutting-edge technology to improve quality while reducing costs. She also worked for several years for the Pulp and Paper Research Institute of Canada in Montreal and Vancouver as a research engineer, where she worked on the design and implementation of different estimation methods and advanced control systems. She was the recipient of the Technology All-Star award in 2002. She was named among 88 of the U.S.’s “Brightest and Inventive Young Engineers” participating in the National Academy of Engineers, 2005, at the U.S. Frontiers of Engineering Symposium. She was awarded an NSF CAREER award in 2023.

Research

  • Power systems stability
  • Integration of renewable energy to the electric grid
  • Stochastic control
  • Process control
  • Manufacturing optimization
Courses

2024-2025

  • Introduction to Control Systems
  • Introduction to Nonlinear Systems
  • Model Predictive Control
  • Linear Control Systems
  • Power System Analysis
  • Power System Stability and Control
  • Linear Systems
  • Circuit 1

For a list of Electrical Engineering course descriptions, visit the Undergraduate Course Descriptions page or the Graduate Course Descriptions page.

2025-2026

  • Introduction to Control System, Linear Control System, Linear Systems
Publications
  • Khanbaghi and A. Zecevic, "An LMI-based Control Strategy for Large-Scale Systems with Applications to Interconnected Microgrid Clusters," IEEE Access, 2022, doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3216290.
  • Khanbaghi and A. Zecevic, “Stochastic Distributed Control for Arbitrarily Connected Microgrid Clusters”, Energies, v 15, n 14, 5163, July 2022.
  • Zecevic and M. Khanbaghi, “A Parallelizable Algorithm for Stabilizing Large Sparse Linear Systems with Uncertain Interconnections”, IEEE Access, vol. 10, pp. 35888-35899, 2022.
  • Saleh Dinkhah, Johana Salazar Cuellar and Maryam Khanbaghi, “Optimal Power and Frequency Control of Microgrid Cluster with Mixed Loads”, IEEE Open Access Journal of Power and Energy, Feb 2022.

PhD Students

Ph.D. Candidate

Saleh Dinkhah

Research: Primary Control for Islanded Network of Microgrids via Inertia Estimation

M.S. - Texas Tech University, Lubbock, U.S

B.S. - Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), Tehran, Iran

Ph.D. Candidate

Ahmed Saad

Research: Robust primary and secondary level control of Networked of Microgrids

M.S. - California State University, Sacramento

B.S. -  Sudan University of Science & Technology

Ph.D. Candidate

Erika Pearson

Research: Robust Hierarchical Control of Networked of Microgrids

M.S. - Santa Clara University

B.S. - Ecole Polytechnique. Montreal

Ph.D. Student

Minghao Zhang

M.S. -  Santa Clara University

Master's Program Alumni

Nate Tucker '17

Thesis : “Jump Linear Quadratic Control for Energy Management of an Isolated Microgrid”

Nate got his Ph.D. in 2023 from UC Santa Barbara and now is at Apple Inc.

Trey Parker '22

Master's in Power Systems and Sustainable Energy

Thesis: “Analysis of Energy Management of a Hybrid State Microgrid”

Trey is pursuing his Ph.D. in clean hydrogen generation at University of Houston

Danny Mendoza '22

Thesis: “Stability Impacts of Sandia Frequency Shift Anti-Islanding on a Grid-Connected Inverter”

Danny is now at PG&E.

Sofia Brumbaugh '24

Thesis: “ Multi-Battery Model for Optimal Performance and LQR Regulation”

Sofia is now at S&C Electric Company.