Dr. Mladen Kezunovic, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University, was one of six principal investigators at Texas A&M University who was awarded nearly $300,000 in research grants by Texas A&M and Brazilian Universities.
The awards come from a program sponsored jointly by Texas A&M and the Brazilian Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education (CAPES). The CAPES program’s aim is to encourage research collaborations between faculty at Texas A&M and faculty at Brazilian universities.
The program is open to researchers in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The lead Texas A&M principal investigator (PI) must be a tenured or tenure-track faculty and have served as a PI or Co-PI on a competitively awarded state, federal or major foundation grant in the past five years. The lead Brazilian PI must have served as a PI or Co-PI on a competitively awarded CAPES research grant in the past five years. The awards are for two years.
Kezunovic, the Eugene E. Webb Professor in the department, collaborated with Glauco Nery Taranto of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.
The other Texas A&M awardees were:
• Bradford P. Wilcox, Department of Ecosystem Science and Management, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and Antonio Celso Dantas Antonino, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco.
• Courtney Schumacher, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, College of Geosciences and Luiz Augusto Toledo Machado, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais/Centro de Previsao de Tempo e Estudos Climaticos.
• Michael Frederick Criscitiello, Department of Veterinary Pathobiology, College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences and Maria Paula Cruz Schneider, Universidade Federal do Pará.
• Paul de Figueiredo, Department of Veterinary Pathobiology, College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences and Renato de Lima Santos, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais.
• Susanne Talcott, Department of Nutrition and Food Science, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and Luciana Azevedo, Universidade Federal de Alfenas.
Kezunovic, also the director of the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station’s Smart Grid Center, currently serves the site director of the Power Engineering Research Center (PSerc), NSF I/UCRCs. Before joining Texas A&M in 1986 he worked for Westinghouse Electric Corp., Pittsburgh, PA, 1979-1980 and the Energoinvest Company in Europe 1980-1986. Kezunovic has published more than 450 papers in journals and conference proceedings and was invited to give more than 100 lectures world-wide and is listed as a distinguished speaker of the IEEE PES. While at Texas A&M, Kezunovic has been the principal investigator on more than 100 research projects and supervised over 40 graduate students. Recent honors include receiving the Council on Large Electric Systems (CIGRÉ) Technical Committee Award. Kezunovic also is a Fellow of the IEEE, a member of CIGRÉ and a registered professional engineer in Texas.