Pirathayini Srikantha, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science at the Lassonde School of Engineering, will receive the 2022 Ontario Professional Engineers Awards (OPEA) Engineering Medal for the Young Professional category by the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers.
The Young Engineer Medal honours an outstanding Ontario engineer who has made exceptional achievements in their chosen field and has demonstrated excellence, not only in their career, but also through community and professional participation.
Srikantha is an emerging leader within the power engineering community in Canada. She holds a Canada Research Chair Tier 2 in Reliable and Secure Power Grid Systems. Her work leverages the computational capabilities of modern power devices to design distributed grid coordination techniques for economical, sustainable, and resilient system operations. Still early in her career, Srikantha has proven herself to be an impactful emerging research leader, having already published 17 journals and 20 conference papers in top venues in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Moreover, she actively applies her research findings, collaborates with industrial partners such as ETAP and London Hydro, and trains graduate students to equip them with the skills needed to be competitive in the power systems industry.
Srikantha is the associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Smart-Grid, one of the most prestigious journals in power engineering. She actively organizes conferences and workshops on innovative topics related to smart grids, twice serving as co-Chair of the “Artificial Intelligence in Energy Systems” workshop in the IEEE SmartGridComm conference in 2018 (Denmark) and 2019 (Beijing).
She actively contributes to the Lassonde and York University communities by volunteering at events (e.g. Women in Science and Engineering) and competitions (e.g. Girl Guide Day, Shad Valley and First Robotics) that promote STEM to younger generations. She also serves as an exemplary young engineer whose achievements and contributions have made a significant impact in her field, profession, community and society.
Srikantha will receive the award at the OPEA Awards Gala in Vaughan, Ontario on Nov. 18.