Enviropreneurship: Bridging the Gap between Innovation and Function

About this Event
Environmental Entrepreneurship: Bridging Gap between Innovation and Function
Abstract:
Environmental challenges of the current century are systemic threats
to the fabric of our civilization. In this context, environmental
entrepreneurship has emerged as a key mitigation concept that combines
economic and environmental dimensions by leveraging state-of-the-art
technology innovations. Seeing entrepreneurship through the lens of
engineering innovation is crucial to produce actionable theory for
sustainable technology. But what are the environmental entrepreneurship
elements, challenges, and success factors? How can researchers,
technology innovators, and entrepreneurs connect to this emerging field?
This seminar introduces environmental entrepreneurship as the process
of discovering, evaluating, and exploiting market forces that allow to
have effective and fast business cases in environmentally-relevant
markets. The seminar will also discuss views on bridging academic
innovation and technology productization to deliver pragmatic solutions
to environmental challenges of the planet.
Speaker Biography
Dr. Mostafa Farrokhabadi is the Senior Director of Technology at
BluWave-ai, an internationally award-winning startup offering
data-driven control and optimization solutions for smart grids. He has
10 years of experience in designing mission-critical grid solutions for
industry and academia, including technical leadership of a $6M
international consortium in Electric Grid Modernization, and Smart Grid
projects with Hatch and Canadian Solar. Mostafa has authored/co-authored
several high-impact technical papers and patents on intelligent control
and optimization of renewable-penetrated grids. Mostafa obtained his
Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of
Waterloo. He has also studied and performed research in Sweden at KTH
and Germany at KIT. Mostafa has received multiple business, research,
and teaching awards, including the prestigious University of Waterloo
Doctoral Thesis Completion Award and Ottawa’s Forty Under 40. Currently,
he serves as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid
and IEEE DataPort, and Secretary of IEEE Ottawa Section.