Afzal Siddiqui

Afzal Siddiqui is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Statistical Science. Previously, he was a Lecturer in Statistics at UCL (2005-2010) and a College Lecturer in the Department of Banking and Finance at University College Dublin. After having completed his PhD in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from the University of California at Berkeley in 2002, Afzal served as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at UC Berkeley (2002) and a Visiting Post-doctoral Researcher at the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (2002-2003), where he continues to hold a Guest Senior Scientist position. In addition, he is a Professor (20% time) at the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences of Stockholm University. Afzal's research interests are in energy economics, specifically the application of financial and operational research methods for making decisions under uncertainty and managing risk. Currently, he is using mixed-integer programming and real options to support decision making under uncertainty for distributed generation (DG) investment and operations, research and development (R&D) programmes in alternative energy technologies, and demand-side management. Since 2009, he has been involved with the ELDEV project in Trondheim, Norway, which seeks to foster closer cooperation between industry and academia, namely in the area of improved business practices for the electric power industry. He has also contributed to the development of a deterministic optimisation tool, DER-CAM, that solves a microgrid's DG investment and operational problem in detail. Ongoing work involves a UK Energy Research Centre project on the use of real options in energy-sector decarbonisation as well as coordination of an EU FP7 project, EnRiMa, which aims to use stochastic optimisation in order to improve energy efficiency and manage risk in European public buildings.