His background is in power systems and smart grid. Prior to joining CSULB, he was a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Electrical Energy at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his PhD from Carnegie Mellon University in 2012. He was also a visiting PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2010. Dr. Nazari has over thirty publications in the areas of smart grid and power systems. He leads a recently funded $2.5M demonstration project by California Energy Commission to implement, demonstrate, and evaluate an IoT-based energy management system in a large academic building.