Muhammad Umer Tariq
Education
- Ph.D. in Electrical & Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology (May 2010–Apr 2016) — Thesis: Service-Oriented Reference Model for Cyber-Physical Systems; Advisor: Dr. Marilyn C. Wolf
- Graduate Certificate in Engineering Entrepreneurship, Scheller College of Business, Georgia Institute of Technology (2014–2015)
- M.S. in Electrical & Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology (Aug 2008–May 2010)
- B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering (Rank 8/260), University of Engineering & Technology, Lahore, Pakistan (2003–2007)
Research Interests
- Cyber-physical systems; Internet-of-Things; geospatial data science for energy and climate resilience; software architecture; systems engineering.
Biography
Dr. Muhammad Umer Tariq has been Assistant Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Habib University since January 2021, teaching mandatory undergraduate courses across EE, CE, and CS majors — including Database Systems, Computer Architecture, Signals and Systems, and Digital Signal Processing — and designing a new Geographic Information Systems elective. He serves as the elected ECE Representative on Habib’s Faculty Senate, chairs the DSSE Professional Practice Courses Committee and the ECE Curriculum Planning and Review Committee, and sits on the CE Faculty Search and ECE Sustainability committees.
Before Habib, Dr. Tariq was Co-founder and Principal Software Architect of ProsumerGrid, Inc., an Atlanta-based startup he ran from 2015 to 2020 that won multiple R&D grants from the US Department of Energy, ARPA-E, and national labs for distributed energy resource simulation and planning software; he served as Principal Software Architect on ARPA-E’s Distribution System Operator (DSO) Simulation Studio and as Geospatial Data Scientist on the post-Hurricane Maria Puerto Rico Grid Redesign Study. He completed his Ph.D. at Georgia Tech (2010–2016) under Dr. Marilyn C. Wolf on service-oriented cyber-physical systems, following an earlier Graduate Research Assistantship on the ARPA-E-funded Green Electricity Network Integration Program and a GE Smart Grid Challenge win for a cloud-computing-based residential demand-response solution.
At Habib, Dr. Tariq leads Mahol-Nama (2024–2026) and GEE-GridRiskLab (2022–present), open-source, Google-Earth-Engine-based platforms for environmental monitoring and climate-risk analysis of the electricity grid, both funded through internal faculty and student research grants. He has supervised multiple award-winning undergraduate capstone theses, including a Best EE Capstone Award winner in 2025.
Selected Publications
- Tariq, U., and Wolf, M. “An Hourglass-Shaped Architecture for Model-Based Development of Networked Cyber-Physical Systems.” In Design Automation of Cyber-Physical Systems, Springer Nature, 2019.
- Tariq, U., Florence, J., and Wolf, M. “Improving the Safety and Security of Wide-Area Cyber–Physical Systems Through a Resource-Aware, Service-Oriented Development Methodology.” Proceedings of the IEEE, 106(1), 2018.
- Tariq, U., Grijalva, S., and Wolf, M. “A Service-Oriented, Cyber-Physical Reference Model for Smart Grid.” In Cyber-Physical Systems Approach to Smart Electric Power Grid, Springer, 2015.
- Tariq, U., Swenson, B. P., Narasimhan, A. P., Grijalva, S., Riley, G. F., and Wolf, M. “Cyber-Physical Co-Simulation of Smart Grid Applications using ns-3.” Workshop on ns-3 (WNS3), 2014. (Best Paper Award)
Selected Research Projects (Principal Investigator)
- Mahol-Nama: Environmental Monitoring and Analytics Portal for Pakistan (2024–2026), Internal Faculty Research Grant, Habib University
- GEE-GridRiskLab: Google Earth Engine-Based Tool for Continuous Monitoring of Climate Risks to Electricity Grid (2022–present), Internal Student/Faculty Research Grants, Habib University
Selected Student Capstone Supervision
- Continuous Monitoring of Climate Risks to Electricity Grids using Google Earth Engine — 2025 (Best EE Capstone Award, Habib University)
- Change Detection of the Indus River using Publicly-Available, Free Satellite Imagery — 2024
- Sustainivision: Continuous Monitoring of Urban Greenery Dynamics in Karachi — 2024
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