Headshot of ARPA-E Program Director Dr. Mario Garcia-Sanz

Dr. Mario Garcia-Sanz

Program Director

Dr. Mario Garcia-Sanz currently serves as a Program Director at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). His focus at ARPA-E includes advanced control engineering, wind energy systems, renewable and conventional power generation, electrical distribution systems, smart grid technologies, and water treatment plants and networks. 

Garcia-Sanz is also the inaugural Milton and Tamar Maltz Endowed Chair Professor in Energy Innovation at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU). There, he established the Control and Energy Systems Center and became its Founding Director. Before joining the faculty at CWRU, he held a number of other academic appointments, including as a Full Professor at the Public University of Navarra, a Research Scientist at CEIT and Professor at the University of Navarra TECNUN, a Visiting Professor at the University of Manchester, at Oxford University, at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and at the European Space Agency’s European Space Research and Technology Center. He was also a NATO Research and Technology Organization Lecture Series Director. 

Garcia-Sanz also has extensive private sector experience; he founded CoDyPower, a consulting firm specializing in control systems and energy innovation, and he has worked as a Senior Advisor for several European wind energy companies, electrical utilities, corporations, and space agencies. He holds more than 20 patents, has published over 250 research papers and written three books, and has been the principal investigator of over 50 industry research projects.

Garcia-Sanz earned a Ph.D. in Control and Systems Engineering and an M.S. and B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Navarra TECNUN in Spain.