Erfan Ibrahim, Ph.D.

Erfan Ibrahim, Ph.D.
Center Director for Cyber-Physical Systems Security & Resilience R&D
National Renewable Energy Lab

Dr. Erfan Ibrahim is the Center Director for Cyber-Physical Systems Security & Resilience R&D at the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden Colorado. Dr. Ibrahim works with the public and private sector to identify security requirements, evaluate cybersecurity standards, test cybersecurity controls and determine residual risk in smart networks in the electric sector, water and oil & gas. He serves as the chief liaison from NREL to the Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability (OE) at the Department of Energy. He is also serving on the cybersecurity and resilience team within the Grid Modernization Lab Consortium for the DoE.

Dr. Ibrahim has had a 30 year career working in a variety of fields including plasma physics, nuclear fusion engineering, telecom, IT, network management, communications, smart grid and cybersecurity. He has worked for Lawrence Livermore National Lab, UCLA, Pacific Bell, Newbridge Networks, Jyra Research, Electric Power Research Institute, Scitor and Penn State University. He served as a consultant through his company, The Bit Bazaar LLC for over 10 years in the high tech, financial services, government and energy sectors. Dr. Ibrahim led the industry consensus building exercise in the NIST Smart Grid Interoperability Roadmap project during 2009 and also led the National Electric Sector Cybersecurity Organization Resources (NESCOR) project from DoE during 2010-2011 while serving as a Technical Executive in the Intelligrid Program at EPRI. Dr. Ibrahim has a BS Honors in Physics from Syracuse University, an MS in Mechanical Engineering from University of Texas Austin and a PhD in Nuclear Engineering from the University of California Berkeley.