Dr Naran M Pindoriya is a Professor in Department of Electrical Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, India. He is a core committee member in Centre for Sustainable Development at IIT Gandhinagar. In addition, he holds an independent director position at Gujarat State Electricity Corporation Ltd (GSECL). Before he joined IIT Gandhinagar, he was a research fellow in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at National University of Singapore, Singapore in 2010. He received his PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India in 2009. His core area of specialization lies at the intersection of power and energy systems, smart grid, renewable energy-rich grid operation and management and development of demand side management through digitization - decision support system via advanced optimization, artificial intelligence based forecasting, and energy data analytical tools - to leverage the grid flexibilities for the successful transition to a low-carbon sustainable energy ecosystem.

He leads Power Systems and Smart Grid Laboratory at IIT Gandhinagar. His accomplishments in executing the industry relevant national/international collaborative research and consultancy projects to develop a strong industry-academic research program for supporting the successful transition to a promising environmentally sustainable energy ecosystem that involves (1) optimal utilization of distributed clean energy resources (2) developing smart grid technologies and (3) promoting energy efficiency at MSMEs industries and electricity distribution systems. His research is focused on development of innovative technology solutions to accomplish those specific objectives.

He is PI of the India-France project funded by CEFIPRA “[ADEPT] AI-assisted Energy Portfolio Optimization Toolkit for Renewable Energy-rich Grid Management”. He has successfully completed the Central Power Research Institute (CPRI) funded project (2022-2024) “Cyber-Attack Analysis Toolkit for Cyber-Physical Distribution System Security [CyberDiSS]”, and the international collaborative research projects: Indo-German (IGSTC) industry relevance project (2018-2022) “ECO-WET: Efficient Coupling of Water and Energy Technologies for Smart Sustainable Cities”, and DST Mission Innovation - Smart Grid project (2018-2022) “Development of Prosumer Driven Integrated SMART grid”, and DST-UKIERI project "Data-driven intelligent energy management for environmental sustainable energy access”.

His team supports MSME sector by conducting detailed energy assessment studies to enhance their overall energy efficiency and reduce the carbon footprints. The Energy Assessment and Sustainability study work, being performed by the project team, has the core objective to identify, evaluate, and recommend through analyses of industrial plant operations – opportunities to conserve energy, minimize waste, and reduce the overall cost of operations. Total 47 detailed energy audits and 90+ walkthrough assessment are completed at various industry clusters in Gujarat including Ceramic, Diamond, Textile, Chemical, Cold storages, Metal, Sea food, Pharma, etc. and has achieved significant saving in energy bills (INR 908 Lakhs) and reduction in carbon emission equivalent (16500 tCo2 eq). This initiative started under Kotak-IITM Save Energy Mission (KISEM – a CSR initiative by Kotak Mahindra Bank).

He won the India Smart Grid Forum (ISGF) Innovation Awards 2023 – Platinum award for the award category “Smart Technology – Electricity Distribution, to recognize his technological innovation “SMART AGENT: A Universal IoT-based Smart Energy Management Device”. He has received the Excellence in Outreach Activities Award at IIT Gandhinagar for the academic year 2022-23. He has also received the IEEE Power & Energy Society (PES) Gujarat Chapter Outstanding Engineer award (2017) to recognize his research contribution in power systems and smart grid. In addition, he has been awarded the prestigious Building Energy Efficiency Higher & Advanced Network (BHAVAN) Fellowship by India-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF) in 2016.

He has guided seven PhD and 22 MTech Theses and presently supervising three PhD and four MTech theses. One PhD student and Four MTech students in Electrical Engineering, worked under his supervision (graduated in 2024, 2023, 2021 and 2020) won the GRID-INDIA Power Systems Awards (GIPSA), formerly known as the POSOCO Power System Awards (PPSA). He is the co-author/author of 85+ research articles in peer-reviewed international journals and IEEE conferences, and six book chapters. He has filed a patent “A Universal IoT-based Smart Energy Management Device” in 2022.

He is a senior member of IEEE, member of IEEE-PES and IEEE-IAS, Fellow of IETE and Institution of Engineers (India).