Mario Garcia-Sanz

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

ABOUT MARIO GARCIA-SANZ

Dr. Mario Garcia-Sanz is a University Professor, Director, and Senior Advisor with over 30 years of experience leading large engineering teams, and developing new systems thinking and control co-design approaches for sustainable energy solutions. From January 2018 to January 2026, he served as a Program Director at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) in Washington DC. This incredible opportunity allowed him to lead over 90 projects in more than 30 states, interact with thousands of researchers, start many programs, and manage a portfolio worth a quarter billion dollars in federal funding. He pioneered novel research in energy innovation, with new breakthroughs in control co-design, synergies, metric spaces, power generation, and grid control and optimization. Prof. Garcia-Sanz also excelled in academia and industry. He held appointments at NASA JPL, the European Space Agency, NATO, Case Western Reserve University, Oxford University, Manchester University, Public University of Navarra, and TECNUN. His research group on QFT robust control included over 100 PhD and Master students under his supervision over the years. He also worked as a Senior Advisor for energy companies and electrical utilities in Europe and the U.S, being one of the pioneers on the design of commercial wind turbines since the nineties. By the numbers, he has produced over 250 research papers, 20 patents, 3 CRC-Press books on control engineering, 2 Matlab toolboxes, 50 industrial projects where he served as Principal Investigator, and 90 projects where he served as Program Director.