Selected Awards and Honors

Best Student Paper Finalist Award (as an advisor) of American Control Conference, 2025.

Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Control Systems Society, 2024.

Antonio Ruberti Young Researcher Prize given by the Control Systems Society, 2022.

Fellow of the Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association (AAIA), 2022.

IEEE Fellow, 2022.

Best Paper Award of Journal of Global Optimization, 2021.

Best Student Paper Finalist Award (as an advisor) of American Control Conference, 2021.

Best Student Paper Award (as an advisor) of INFORMS Energy, Natural Resources and the Environment (ENRE), 2020.

Outstanding Student Paper Award (as an advisor) of the IEEE Conference on Control Technology and Applications, 2020.

Best-of-the-Best Conference Paper Award of the IEEE Power & Energy Society General Meeting, 2020.

Best Student Paper Award (as an advisor) of American Control Conference, 2020.

Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, 2019.

Best Student Paper Finalist Award (as an advisor) of American Control Conference, 2019.

DARPA Director's Fellowship, 2017.

Recipient of the SIAM Control and Systems Theory Prize, 2017.

Office of Naval Research's Director of Research Early Career Grant, 2016.

Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award, 2016.

Recipient of the INFORMS ENRE Energy Best Publication Award for the paper Convex Relaxation for Optimal Power Flow Problem: Mesh Networks, 2016.

Recipient of the Donald P. Eckman Award from the American Automatic Control Council, 2016.

INFORMS Optimization Society Prize for Young Researchers, 2015.

DARPA Young Faculty Award, 2015.

Prize Paper Award for the paper “Zero Duality Gap in Optimal Power Flow Problem” given by the IEEE PES Power System Analysis Computing and Economics Committee, 2015.

One of the 2 nominees of Columbia University for Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering 2015

Best Student Paper Finalist Award (as an advisor) of the 53rd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control 2014 (link).

Invited to participate in National Academy of Engineering's 2014 US Frontiers of Engineering Symposium.

Resonate Award, 2014 (Video: Fortune of CNN; Press Release: Reuters and Thomson Reuters).

Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, 2014 (see here for more details).

NSF CAREER Award, 2014.

Google Faculty Research Award, 2013.

Milton and Francis Clauser Doctoral Prize (best university-wide Ph.D. thesis at Caltech), 2011.

New Face of Engineering, named by the National Engineers Week Foundation in the United States, 2011 (see link 1, link 2, or link 3 for more details).

Senior Member of IEEE since July 2010.

Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools Master's Thesis Award (best master's thesis in the category of Physical Sciences, Mathematics and Engineering in more than 120 universities including Cornell, Harvard, Yale, McGill, and University of Toronto written in 2007-2009), 2010 (see link 1 or link 2 for more details).

Governor General of Canada’s Gold Medal (best campus-wide master's/Ph.D. thesis at Concordia University), 2008.

F. A. Gerard Prize (best master's thesis in the school of engineering at Concordia University), 2008.

Postgraduate Scholarship of Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, 2008-2010.

Silver Medal in the International Mathematical Olympiad, Romania, 1999.

Gold Medal in the National Mathematical Olympiad, Iran, 1998.

Best paper in session in CDC 2006, ACC 2007, ACC 2008, and ACC 2010 (twice).

Elected full member of Sigma Xi Scientific Society, 2007.