National Centre for Energy Systems Integration

Staff Profile

Dr Zoya Pourmirza

Senior Research Associate

Background

Dr. Zoya Pourmirza received her PhD from The University of Manchester in 2015, and joined Newcastle University (NU) as a Research Associate in 2016. She works with the National Centre for Energy Systems Integration (CESI) and Active Building Centre (ABC), investigating the design and development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) architecture for smart energy networks with the focus on data communication efficiency and cyber-security issues related to energy systems. She leads the Security and Resilience theme at the Centre for Energy

Zoya has been involved in a number of research, teaching, and supervisory projects. She was the lead researcher for the UKRI Research and Innovation Infrastructure Roadmap (RIIR) project, where she identified the current landscape and future key RIIs in Energy sector in the UK in order to inform policy makers to meet the UK Government 2050 carbon targets.

Dr Pourmirza has been the PI of the mini project entitled Heat as a service: Benefits, barriers, and evidence needs project funded by UKERC through a two-stage competitive process. She has been involved in shaping a number of successful proposals including Active Building Centre (ABC) funded by Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund; Supergen Energy Network Hubs funded by EPSRC; Reliability and cyber-security of future, smart, low carbon electrical networks project funded by Hubnet.  

She has also served as a policy advisor for the Department for Transport (DfT) working on cybersecurity framework for Electric Vehicle (EV) chargepoints, to inform policy and relevant standards and regulatory approaches.

 




 

Research

Dr Pourmirza principle research interests are in digitalisation of energy systems, with particular emphasis on making the energy systems ICT infrastructure energy aware and cyber secure.

Teaching

Zoya has designed and delivered lectures for undergraduate and postgraduate at:

  • Newcastle University (e.g. EEE 8080 and EEE 8083)
  • AT-SGIRES project in Middle East countries (classroom lectures, online lectures, training workshops)
  • Skoltech university in Moscow, Russia

Publications