Liu Institute for Global Issues
6476 NW Marine Dr.
Vancouver BC V6T 1Z2

hisham.zerriffi@ubc.ca
(604) 827-4468 (voice)
(604) 822-6966 (fax)

Research Interests
Political and social factors in electricity development; impact of institutions on distributed generation, reliability and economics of distributed generation; electricity policy and regulation; robustness of electric power systems under stress

Hisham Zerriffi is an Assistant Professor and the Ivan Head South/North Research Chair in the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia. Prior to joining the UBC Faculty, Dr. Zerriffi was a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development. At PESD, he led a new project on the role of institutions in the deployment and diffusion of small-scale energy technologies. The centerpiece of this on-going study is a comparative analysis of different organizational and business models used to provide rural electricity on a local level.

Dr. Zerriffi received his Ph.D. from the Engineering and Public Policy Department at Carnegie Mellon University. His dissertation, "Electric Power Systems Under Stress: An Evaluation of Centralized Versus Distributed System Architectures" examined the reliability and economic implications of implementing large-scale distributed energy systems as a way to mitigate the effects of persistent stress on electric power systems. He has a B.A. in Physics (with minors in Political Science and Religion) from Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH and a Masters of Applied Science in Chemistry from McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Before joining CMU he was a Senior Scientist at the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.