Prof. Dr. Ferdinanda Ponci received a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy in 2002. In 2003, she joined the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA, where she was tenured and promoted. In 2009, she joined the E.ON Research Center, Institute for Automation of Complex Power Systems, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany, where she is currently a Professor of monitoring and distributed control for power systems. Her current research interests include automation and the advanced monitoring of active distribution systems.