Dr. Benhaddou is a Professor and a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Houston. His research includes the development of Internet of Things (IoT) and network-centric smart building, smart grids, and smart cities. He has extensive experience developing event-driven modeling tools for network performance evaluation for scalable systems. He is currently spearheading the development of IoT-based smart buildings as smart microgrids that integrate renewable energy at the University of Houston. Dr. Benhaddou has experience in developing optimization techniques using genetic algorithms for microgrid applications with a focus on renewable integration in smart buildings. His work is funded by Fulbright as well USAID & National Academies through the PEER grant titled. He is an expert in software development for system integration and modeling tools. He is currently developing open source software for microgrid and district energy planning tool.