Staff Profile

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.

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.

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

• Pourmirza Z, Walker S, Brooke J. Data reduction algorithm for correlated data in the smart grid. IET Smart Grid 2021, 4(5), 474-488.
• Pourmirza Z, Walker S. Electric Vehicle charging station: cyber security challenges and perspective. In: IEEE International Conference on Smart Energy Grid Engineering (SEGE 2021). 2021, Oshawa, ON, Canada: IEEE.
• Britton J, Minas A, Marques A, Pourmirza Z. Exploring the potential of heat as a service in decarbonization: Evidence needs and research gaps. Energy Sources, Part B: Economics, Planning, and Policy 2021, 16(11-12), 999-1015.
• Khalil M, McGough S, Pourmirza Z, Pazhoohesh M, Walker S. Transfer Learning Approach for Occupancy Prediction in Smart Buildings. In: 2021 12th International Renewable Engineering Conference (IREC). 2021, Amman, Jordan: IEEE.
• Pourmirza Z, Walker S. Cyber Threats and Attacks in Smart Energy Networks. In: Mishra BK; Piqueira JRC, ed. Understanding Cyber Threats and Attacks. Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers, Inc, 2020.
• Pourmirza Z, Srivastava A. Cybersecurity Analysis for the Communication Protocol in Smart Grids. In: IEEE 8th International Conference on Smart Energy Grid Engineering (SEGE 2020). 2020, Oshawa, ON, Canada: IEEE.
• Pourmirza Z, Walker S. Efficient Data Transmission for ICT of Energy Systems. In: ACM womENcourage 2020. 2020, Baku, Azerbaijan / virtual: Association for Computing Machinery.
• Pazhoohesh M, Pourmirza Z, Walker S. A Comparison of Methods for Missing Data Treatment in Building Sensor Data. In: 2019 IEEE 7th International Conference on Smart Energy Grid Engineering (SEGE). 2019, Oshawa, ON, Canada: IEEE.
• Marques C, Minas A, Britton J, Pourmirza Z. Heat as a Service: Understanding evidence needs and research gaps. UKERC, 2019.
• Pourmirza Z, Hosseini H, Giaouris D, Walker S, Taylor P, Bateman N. UK Energy Storage Perspective: Current Landscape and Future Roadmap. In: UK Energy Storage Conference (UKES2019). 2019. In Preparation.
• Cameron C, Patsios C, Taylor PC, Pourmirza Z. Using Self-Organizing Architectures to Mitigate the Impacts of Denial-of-Service Attacks on Voltage Control Schemes. IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid 2019, 10(3), 3010-3019.
• Ebrahimy R, Pourmirza Z. Mitigating Cyber Threats in Smart Energy Subsystems Using Safety Critical Analysis Techniques. In: 2018 IEEE International Conference on Smart Energy Grid Engineering (SEGE). 2018, Oshawa, ON, Canada: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
• Ebrahimy R, Morisset C, Patsios H, Pourmirza Z. Report on Smart Energy Systems and Cyber Security. Newcastle upon Tyne: School of Computing, Newcastle University, 2018.
• Ebrahimy R, Pourmirza Z. Cyber-interdependency in smart energy systems. In: 3rd International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy (ICISSP 2017). 2017, Porto, Portugal: SciTePress.
• Pourmirza Z, Brooke J. Energy Aware Communication in the Smart Grid. In: 3rd International Conference on Smart Grids and Green IT Systems SMARTGREENS. 2014, Barcelona: Scitepress.
• Pourmirza Z, Brooke J. Energy Efficient ICT in the Smart Electrical Grid. In: ACM womENcourage Europe 2014. 2014, Manchester: Association for Computing Machinery.
• Pourmirza Z, Brooke J. A Realistic ICT Network Design and Implementation in the Neighbourhood Area of the Smart Grid. Smart Grid and Renewable Energy 2013, 4, 436-448.
• Pourmirza Z, Brooke J. Data Reduction for an ICT Network in the Smart Grid. In: 9th International Conference on Intelligent Environments. 2013.
• Pourmirza Z, Brooke J. Monitoring and Visualising a Neighbourhood Area Sub-Grid. In: International Conference on Smart Grids and Green IT Systems. 2013.
• Pourmirza Z, Brooke J. The Wireless Sensor Network and Local Computational Unit in the Neighbourhood Area Network of the Smart Grid. In: International Conference on Sensor Networks (SENSORNETS 2013). 2013.
• Pourmirza Z, Brooke J. AN EXPERIMENTAL COMMUNICATION ARCHITECTURE FOR MONITORING AND CONTROL OF SUB-GRIDS. In: International Conference on Smart Grids and Green IT Systems. 2012. In Preparation.
• Pourmirza Z, Broke J. Integration of wireless sensor networks and local computational unit in the communcation network of the smart grid. In: Conference on Applied Radio Systems Research for Postgraduates and Young Researchers. 2012.