SUSTAINABILITY SEMINAR SERIES: 

ABSTRACT: 

Participatory energy systems hold great potential towards increased deployment of sustainable energy through active participation and contribution from local prosumers as key stakeholders in the energy ecosystem. Understanding aspects related to prosumers is crucial for acceptance and adoption of the distributed and participatory energy systems such as P2P energy trading. Regulatory and policy aspects also play a vital role in such a transition. There is however a clear knowledge gap as aspects related to users are less explored, and policies are mainly focused on the environmental agenda. In the convergence environment PriTEM (Privacy-preserving Transactive Energy Management), we do research at the intersection of Energy Systems, Energy Informatics, Social Psychology and Data and Energy legislation through a collaborative and a highly cross-disciplinary research synergy between the Department of Informatics (IFI), the Department of Technology Systems (ITS), the Department of Psychology (PSI), the Department of Energy and Resources Law, and the Department of Private Law/Norwegian Research Center for Computers and Law (SERI), at the University of Oslo, and other stakeholders including prosumers, regulatory bodies (NVE), operators (Nord Pool) and other industrial partners.

One of the main objectives in the project is to examine and characterize the socio-psychological aspects that can act as potential barriers in the transition towards a TEM framework. Leveraging that, we will develop an understanding of the role of trust, transparency, and prosumer empowerment in this context, and develop computation efficient and scalable privacy preserving and secure data sharing solutions to build and enhance digital trust to empower the prosumers. Finally, the project will integrate the socio-psychological and regulatory aspects into a holistic framework to optimize the TEM process incorporating technical challenges related to the energy system.

In this talk, I will present about our research in the PriTEM project, highlighting the works that lie at the intersection of technology, social sciences and law. In the later part of the talk, my Postdoctoral researcher will present about his ongoing work in PriTEM about how existing AI tools and open data can contribute to city level solar power profiling.

SPEAKER BIO

Sabita Maharjan [SM'19] is a Full Professor at the Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, Norway from September 2022. She received her Ph.D. degree in Networks and Distributed Systems from the University of Oslo and Simula Research Laboratory, Norway, in 2013. She worked as a Research Engineer in Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R), Singapore in 2010. She was a Visiting Scholar at Zhejiang Univeristy (ZU), Hangzhou, China in 2011, and a Visiting Research Collaborator in University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC), USA in 2012. From 2014-2016 she worked as a Postdoctoral researcher at Simula Research Laboratory (SRL), Norway. From 2017-2022, She worked as a Senior Research Scientist at SRL and SimulaMet, Norway and as an Associate Professor at the University of Oslo, Norway. 

Professor Maharjan is a recipient of the IEEE TCGCC Outstanding Young Researcher Award 2020. She is the Highly Cited Researcher for 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 according to Web of Science- which is an accolade given in recognition on of the exceptional research performance demonstrated by multiple highly cited papers that rank in the top 1% of citations for field and year- worldwide. 

Professor Maharjan’s academic services include her role as the

• Vice Chair of the IEEE Communications Society Technical Committee on Green Communications and CompuCng (TCGCC) SIG on Green AI

• Editor for IEEE Transactions on Green Communications and Networking (IEEE TGCN)

• Associate Editor for the IEEE Internet of Things Journal (IEEE IoT-J)

• Associate Editor for the IEEE Open Computer Society Journal (IEEE OJCS), and

• Guest Editor for top-tier journals such as IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (IEEE JSAC), IEEE Trans. on Green Communications and Networking (IEEE TGCN), and IEEE Access.

Professor Maharjan is the General Co-Chair of the IEEE VTC Spring 2025 held in Oslo Norway in June 2025, the Technical Program Committee Chair of IEEE SmartGridComm 2024 held in Oslo Norway in Sept. 2024; and the Symposium Chair for the Green Communication Systems and Networks Symposium in the IEEE Globecom 2024- held in Capetown, South Africa in December 2024. Other recent academic services include her role as the Symposium Co-Chair for the track Wireless Networks, Services and Network Security in IEEE Wireless Communications and Signal Processing (IEEE WCSP) 2025 to be held in oct. 2025 in Hefei, China, and the Special Session Co-Chair in NextGCom 2025 (2nd Training School and Research Colloquium on Next Generation Communications with the focus on AI/ML for 6G Communication Networks) to be held in Argostoli, Kefalonia (Greece) in Oct. 2025. In the past, she has contributed actively in the technical program committees of conferences including top conferences like IEEE INFOCOM and IEEE IWQoS. 

Her current research interests include Energy informatics, vehicular networks, 5G Beyond and 6G, network security, Internet of Things, and AI for networks.

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