Sahar was born and raised in Tehran, Iran. She received her PhD degree in electrical engineering from the University of Toronto, Canada in 2013. Her PhD thesis was on small-signal stability enhancement in DC-segmented AC power systems. The main goal of her PhD research was to design a control scheme for the power system to prevent grid instability and large-scale blackouts.

Before joining the MEDOW network, she was a post-doctoral fellow at the Centre for Applied Power Electronics (CAPE) at the University of Toronto. During her post-doctoral research, she worked on the coordination of renewable resources and energy storage systems to further improve AC grid stability. She was also working on designing controllers with low communication requirements to improve multi-infeed HVDC systems stability.  Sahar’s main research interests are renewable energy, power system stability and control and energy markets.

Sahar will be a MEDOW Experienced Researcher in the ELECTA research division in the department of electrical engineering at KU Leuven.  Working alongside Professor Dirk Van Hertem, she will focus on the relaying protection of DC grids. In this project, she will work on the analyses of DC grid faults, developing fault detection and identification methods, improving DC grid protection algorithms and post-fault restoration schemes.

In her free time, Sahar enjoys running and hiking.