Mangalore Anantha Pai (5 October 1931 – 2 March 2023) was an Indian electrical engineer, academic and a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.[1] A former professor of electrical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur,[2] he is known for his contributions in the fields of power stability, power grids, large scale power system analysis, system security and optimal control of nuclear reactors[3] and he has published 8 books and several articles.[4] Pai is the first India-born scientist to be awarded a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.[citation needed]
Pai's early researches were based on power system stability, security and model reduction and his work on Model Reduction of Large-Scale Power Systems has been reported to be of significance to field of power systems.[14] He is known to have introduced Lyapunov's method in researches on power system stability and energy functions.[5] Introduction of computer applications in power systems is another of his contributions and a power system software he has developed is in use with several power distribution networks.[16] Later, he worked on Smart Grid, Microgrid and Renewable Energy and how they could be integrated into the main electrical grid of a power system;[11] earlier, at IIT Kanpur, he encouraged research on Control and Power. He has also contributed in the field of industrial consultancy and has served as a member of the editorial boards of Power and Energy series of Springer.[11]
In 1963, Pai was selected to join IIT Kanpur as one of the earliest member of the Electrical Engineering faculty. Under the guidance of economist John Kenneth Galbraith, IIT Kanpur became the first institute in India to offer Computer science education. The earliest computer courses were started at IIT Kanpur in August 1963 on an IBM 1620 system, which was flown from Princeton to Kanpur. The initiative for computer education came from the Electrical engineering department. An intense outreach program in Computer Education was established during his time at IIT Kanpur. It was during his years at IIT Kanpur, Pai published his first book, Computer Techniques in Power System Analysis.[17] His second book, Power System Stability: Analysis by the Direct Method of Lyapunov, was also published before he moved to US in 1981.[18] This was followed by five more authored books, Com Tech In Power Sys Ana,[19]Power System Dynamics and Stability,[20]Power Circuits and Electromechanics,[21]Energy Function Analysis for Power System Stability[22] and Small Signal Analysis of Integrated Power Systems, the last one published in 2016.[23] In between, he co-edited an Oxford University Pressfestschrift on Homi J. Bhabha titled Homi Bhabha and the Computer Revolution,[24] which was featured in the Indian edition of MIT Technology Review in May/June 2011.[25] He has also contributed chapters to books published by others[26][27][28] and has authored over 125 peer-reviewed articles;[29][30][note 2] the online article repository of Indian Academy of Sciences has listed 107 of them.[31] He is reported to have helped organize two symposia of International Federation of Automatic Control in India and has delivered keynote or invited speeches at several science seminars in India and abroad including the Seminar on Voltage Instability in Power Network organized by the Delhi chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 1991.[32] He has also mentored a number of doctoral scholars in their studies.[5]
Nguyen, T. B.; Pai, M. A.; Hiskens, I. A. (2000). "Direct computation of critical clearing time using trajectory sensitivities". 2000 Power Engineering Society Summer Meeting (Cat. No.00CH37134). Vol. 1. pp. 604–608. doi:10.1109/PESS.2000.867655. ISBN0-7803-6420-1. S2CID110085952.
Chaniotis, D.; Pai, M. A.; Hiskens, I. (2001). "Sensitivity analysis of differential-algebraic systems using the GMRES method-application to power systems". ISCAS 2001. The 2001 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (Cat. No.01CH37196). Vol. 2. pp. 117–120. doi:10.1109/ISCAS.2001.921260. ISBN0-7803-6685-9. S2CID17064410.
Nguyen, T. B.; Pai, M. A.; Hiskens, I. A. (2002). "Sensitivity approaches for direct computation of critical parameters in a power system". International Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems. 24 (5): 337–343. Bibcode:2002IJEPE..24..337N. doi:10.1016/S0142-0615(01)00050-3.
Chaniotis, D.; Pai, M. A. (2003). "A new preconditioning technique for the GMRES algorithm in power flow and P-V curve calculations". International Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems. 25 (3): 239–245. Bibcode:2003IJEPE..25..239C. doi:10.1016/S0142-0615(02)00034-0.
The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research awarded Pai the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, one of the highest Indian science awards in 1974.[33] The Indian Academy of Sciences elected him as a fellow in 1979[6] and he became an elected fellow of the Indian National Science Academy in 1980.[1] The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers elected him as a fellow in 1986; IEEE honored him again in 1996 with life fellowship.[4] He is also an elected fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineers.[7] The Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) department of the University of Illinois organized a day-long felicitation event, PaiFest, in his honor on 15 October 2015 at the department.[34] The event included a symposium where a number of his students and colleagues such as William H. Sanders, Peter W. Sauer, Ian Hiskens, Bernie Lesieutre, Marija D. Ilić, Kash Khorasani and Vijay Vittal presented papers[35] and Pai himself made a presentation titled, From Lyapunov to Krylov – My Research Journey.[36] In 2014, IIT Kanpur honored him with the Institute Fellow award.
