Dr. Oluleke Olayade BABAYOMI has been working at the intersection of renewable energy technology, clean energy transition policy and entrepreneurship for over 15 years. He is a Researcher at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, South Korea. His research focuses on sustainable energy/mobility technologies and equitable clean energy transition policy.
Until 2019, Dr. Babayomi was a Principal Engineer at Nigeria’s National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA), where he led the team that developed the first multi-disciplinary NASRDA-CSTP software application for the analysis and visualization of rocket parameters. Since 2019, he has held roles as a team leader/key participant on several technical projects in China and South Korea with respect to microgrids, wind turbine systems, MVDC grids and electrical machine drives. He is credited with inventing the parallel and parallel-cascade extended state observers that contributed to an advanced controller system for reliable offshore wind energy conversion. The latter was awarded a Gold Medal at the 2024 Geneva International Exhibition of Inventions.
Babayomi is also passionate about clean energy transition equity. He serves as the Vice President (Marketing) of IEEE Smart Village, the flagship humanitarian program of the IEEE, N.J., USA, that has provided more than US$ 15 million seed-funding to local entrepreneurs in underserved communities around the world —for the productive use of renewable energy and technology. He is also a regular contributing writer to the London School of Economics and Political Science Blog on the subject of affordable clean energy transition for developing countries.
Babayomi is a Non-Executive Director/advisory board member of Tunde Ben Global Ltd, a renewable energy company in Nigeria. His business acumen was honed through four years of prior experience as an award-winning business relationship/sales manager to several engineering businesses at a leading Nigerian bank. Between 2009-2011, he was responsible for securing a total of US$ 55 million to finance investments of the bank in his clients’ technical projects.
Dr. Babayomi is a Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (NIEEE), registered electrical engineer in Nigeria, has published more than 45 peer-reviewed publications and holds 13 invention patents (granted/pending). He has delivered/moderated fifteen technical presentations to audiences in at least 18 countries, including three tutorials at Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) international conferences. He is also the General Chair of the 2024 40th Anniversary of MPC Application to Power Electronics Keynote Webinars (IEEE-PELS sponsored) with more than 300 registered attendees.
Babayomi has won several (inter)national awards for both innovation and excellence, including the 2020 Best Technical Advance Award, IEEE Smart Village—Meet the Entrepreneur Competition. He holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Shandong University, Jinan, China, where he was awarded the Outstanding International Student in Shandong [Province]. His M.Sc. and B.Sc. (Hons.) degrees in Electrical and Electronics Engineering are from the University of Lagos, Akoka, Nigeria, where he won national merit-based scholarships from Mobil and Texaco Oil companies.