Board & Advisors

Devashish Paul

Devashish Paul founded BluWave-ai in 2017 and has built out one of the world’s premiere renewable energy and transport electrification companies, based in Ottawa, Canada. In his role at BluWave-ai, he has taken AI concepts to live working systems from Asia to Europe to North America, successfully navigating the growth of the company through the critical COVID-19 pandemic, onboarding new customers worldwide and growing the team with an international employee group from 15 different countries. Devashish has taken the company to multi-million dollar SaaS revenue and has been an inventor on several of the company’s patents.

Prior to BluWave-ai, Devashish had an extensive career in the semiconductor industry focused on supercomputing, artificial intelligence, and networking. During his 20+ years in the tech world, Devashish has led successful innovations in a diversity of markets at Canadian start-ups, Toronto Stock Exchange-listed, and Silicon Valley public companies. He has grown businesses in Europe, Asia, and North American from the startup level to $110M annual revenue. In industry leadership roles, he ran the High Performance Computing Group in the Open Compute Project (started by Facebook) to create open industry computing platforms for low-latency workloads. Devashish also served as an advisory board member for the CERN Open Lab. Devashish earned a Bachelor of Engineering degree from Royal Military College followed by a Masters in Electrical Engineering (Digital Signal Processing) and an MBA in Marketing, both from the University of Ottawa. He is a veteran of the Royal Canadian Air Force.

Devashish is a life-long cyclist and nature enthusiast using human powered energy for personal transportation to explore the world. He is a 31-time Ironman triathlon finisher, has coached masters athletes to 100+ finishes, was a coach for 14 years with the Kanata Nordic Ski Club, and has raced for Canada in 10 world championships. He is also a world traveler who loves connecting with people in diverse cultures both for personal interests and driving BluWave-ai's goal to become the premier global renewable energy AI company.

Claudio Cañizares, PhD

Claudio Cañizares advises BluWave-ai on smart grid technologies and emerging grid technical strategies. Dr. Cañizares is a Full Professor and the Hydro One Endowed Chair at the Electrical and Computer Engineering (E&CE) Department of the University of Waterloo, where he has held various academic and administrative positions since 1993.  

His research activities focus on the study of stability, control, optimization, modelling, simulation, and computational issues in bulk power systems, microgrids, and energy systems, in the context of competitive energy markets and smart grids. He has authored/co-authored many highly cited journal and conference papers, as well as several technical reports, book chapters, disclosures and patents, and has been invited to speak in keynote roles and at seminars at numerous institutions and conferences worldwide.

Dr. Cañizares is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical & Electronic Engineering (IEEE), as well as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, where he is currently the Director of the Applied Science and Engineering Division of the Academy of Science, and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering.  He is also the recipient of the 2017 IEEE Power & Energy Society (PES) Outstanding Power Engineering Educator Award, the 2016 IEEE Canada Electric Power Medal, and of various IEEE PES Technical Council and Committee awards and recognitions. He continues to hold leadership positions in several IEEE-PES Technical Committees, Working Groups and Task Forces.

Dr. Cañizares received an Electrical Engineering degree from the Escuela Politécnica Nacional (EPN) in Quito-Ecuador in 1984, where he held different academic and administrative positions between 1983 and 1993. He earned his MSc (1988) and PhD (1991) degrees in Electrical Engineering are from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  

Paul Georges LeRoux

A co-founder of BluWave-ai, Paul LeRoux was a leader in Deloitte Canada’s efforts to understand the critical issues affecting companies in industries such as energy and resources, telecommunications, cleantech, defence,  aerospace, information technology, digital media, and social media.

Paul provided consultative advice to technology, media and telecom companies developing new technologies, helping them understand the requirements of their end users and their marketplace. He built relationships with suppliers and customers and guided them as they navigated the challenges of business.

As a market facing, project delivery partner, Paul was a leader of teams that provided companies access to the consulting resources they required to be successful. Paul also worked with a large, strong network of innovative organizations at in government, investors, inventors and organizations deploying new technology.

Today, Paul runs his own consulting business, Skate Lace Consulting Inc., providing critical business advisory services to companies seeking to build, grow and extend their value proposition in various marketplaces.

Reshmi Paul, PhD

Reshmi Paul advises BluWave-ai on corporate strategy, go-to-market, and all aspects of human resources and executive leadership. Reshmi is a Partner at ghSMART and is an expert in CEO succession. Her 20 years of strategic and leadership consulting make her a valued advisor for Boards, CEOs and senior teams of Fortune 500 companies globally.

Prior to joining ghSMART, Reshmi was a Partner at RHR International. She served as the Global Practice Leader for RHR's Management Due Diligence, serving private equity clients. She co-led the development of RHR's Executive Women Leadership initiative and has been a speaker at several conferences and round tables on the topic.

Prior to RHR, Reshmi spent nearly a decade at the Monitor Group where she advised senior executives on company strategy and organizational change. She has extensive experience in a number of industries including financial services, private equity, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, professional services, consumer products, retail, media and communications. Reshmi serves on the Board of Trickle Up, a non-profit organization whose mission is to empower ultra-poor women in building sustainable livelihoods through seed grants, skill-building and participation in savings groups.

Reshmi holds an MBA from INSEAD in France, a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Adelphi University in New York, a Masters of Science in Economics from the London School of Economics and a Bachelors degree with Honors from Queen's University in Canada in Math and Economics. Reshmi has lived and worked in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Japan, France, India and Liberia. She currently resides in New York with her husband and three children.

Mario Montana

Mario Montana advises Bluwave-ai on marketing and sales strategy, venture capital (VC) engagements and strategic partnerships. Mario has more than 30 years of experience in technology companies primarily in the semiconductor industry holding positions in General Management, Marketing and Sales.

Most recently, Mario was with Integrated Device Technology (IDT) for over 20 years where as Vice President and General Manager he ran various businesses such as Automotive, Industrial and Enterprise Computing. Mario also ran World Wide Sales at IDT for four years and helped to drive sales revenue from $400M to $800M during that time.

IDT was acquired by Renesas Electronics in April 2019 and since then Mario joined the Bluwave-ai Board of Directors and is an early investor in the company. Mario is also a board member of A3Cube Inc, an AI company based in San Jose, California focused on high performance computing (HPC) applications.

Mario received a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo and a Master in Business Administration degree from Santa Clara University. Mario lives in Los Gatos, California.

Pierre Rivard

Dr. Pierre Rivard has been a champion of cleaner and renewable energy for three decades, and a passionate supporter and developer of the energy technology industry. He has served as CEO, co-founder, chairman, board member, angel investor, advisor, and philanthropist for several innovative companies in California and Canada, from hydrogen fuel cells and electrolysers, to energy storage, wind, flywheels, electric vehicles, aerospace, waste management, and water treatment. He has also chaired national and regional industry and research associations. More recently, he served on Canada's Clean Technology Economic Strategy Table.

Dr. Rivard's successes include the launch and IPO of NASDAQ-listed hydrogen fuel cell company Hydrogenics (HYGS), where he served 12 years as founding President & CEO and later as Executive Chairman.  At Hydrogenics, he built an award-winning, high-performance team that was recognized as Canada's fastest-growing company (#1 on Profit 100 list in 2003).

Presently, Dr. Rivard serves as Executive Chairman and Co-Founder of TUGLIQ Energy Corp., dedicated to energy diversification of Northern mining sites through renewable energy. Earlier on, he served 21 years in the Canadian Air Force.

Dr. Rivard holds a Doctor of Engineering degree from the University of Toronto (Honoris Causa, for lifetime achievements in clean technology), an MBA from the University of Western Ontario's Ivey School of Business, and a Baccalaureate in Mechanical Engineering from Kingston's Royal Military College of Canada. He is a Professional Engineer licensed in Quebec and Ontario, and formerly in California and Norway. Mr. Rivard is married to Catherine Paquet-Rivard, a Cisco-Press author and network security architect, and is the loving father of a daughter Laurence and a son Simon.

Dr. Rivard was appointed to the NRC Council in June 2019.

Mostafa Farrokhabadi

Mostafa Farrokhabadi joined BluWave-ai in May 2018 as the first technical employee and gradually moved himself to VP of Technology taking over all engineering operations of the company which delivered the first ever AI driven electricity market dispatch in both the Canadian and Indian electricity grids . During his time he scales the company's product offering and was instrumental in helping the CEO close Pre Seed and Seed rounds. Mostafa is also a co-inventor on several company patents and was instrumental in driving the overall patent portfolio to an industry leading status and continues as a co inventor on patent applications in flight . In July 2022, he joined the Department of Electrical and Software Engineering at the University of Calgary as an Assistant Professor, with a mandate to inaugurate the Modern Electrical Distribution Systems Research Group. Mostafa has over a decade of experience in cutting-edge energy transition research, development, integration, and commercialization, working on mission-critical projects on three continents. His innovations span electrical energy systems, machine learning, and software development.

Mostafa holds a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Waterloo, ON, Canada. He is the recipient of several prestigious awards and was selected by the Royal Society of Canada among the 21 early-career scientists representing Canada at the 2021 Commonwealth Science Conference. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and a distinguished Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, among several other top-tier professional and service appointments.

Mostafa actively raises awareness of climate change and energy poverty and enjoys reading about science and history. He is inspired by the works of Nikola Tesla, Charles Proteus Steinmetz, and Edith Clarke, among others as well as advising the BluWave-ai technical team on smart grid technology strategies, inventions and approaches.