Dr. Sameh El Khatib received his PhD in Electrical Engineering, as well as his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from McGill University, where he pursued his research in power system analysis and economics, electricity market restructuring and planning, as well as decision-making in the energy sector. He worked under the supervision of one of the most renowned scholars of power systems operation & planning, an IEEE Fellow, Professor Francisco D. Galiana.

During his time as Faculty in the Engineering Systems & Management department at Masdar Institute in Abu Dhabi, his research group focused on the development and analysis of integrated engineering systems as well as demand side management and demand response programs to meet national energy sustainability targets.

As a visiting professor at MIT in Cambridge, he collaborated with Professor Nazli Choucri, the Director of the multi-disciplinary MIT-Harvard research project on Explorations in Cyber International Relations (ECIR). Their joint research was to investigate systematically the security challenges, both cyber and physical, in interfacing the grid’s physical structure with the new smart system layers of the emerging cyber physical smart power grids. The academic community in Cambridge recognized Dr. El Khatib and Professor Choucri’s work on cyber physical sustainability of smart grids and requested that they take part of MIT’s Interdisciplinary Consortium for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity (IC)3.

Aside from his role as a Strategy Consultant at Booz & Company, Dr. El Khatib has also collaborated with various organizations such as GE, Etihad Airlines, ICAD and the University of Tokyo. Before being appointed as CEO of SmartWatt, Dr. El Khatib was a director of energy & power division, as well as senior advisor on strategic engagements for the CEO of ICAD, one of the largest KSA based system technology & integration companies in the region. Dr. El Khatib has numerous publications in power systems and policy-making in top-tier academic journals.

Dr. El khatib principal focus has been utilizing principles of power system economics to develop smart cities that can sustain new electricity markets where the end-user engagement is more pronounced to alleviate the stress on the thermal plants thus relieving the dispatch problem to meet power reliably at a cheaper marginal cost. The essence of such engagement is through manufacturing energy intelligence and power flexibility from end-users and utilizing it to address power grid requirements at a cheaper overall system cost.

Dr. El Khatib Selected Credentials