Case Summary:

An I-140 NIW (National Interest Waiver) is a subcategory of employment-based visas for individuals from foreign countries who want to continue their research in the U.S. Only those individuals who can show that their work is of interest to the country get approval under this criteria. So while preparing the case of a Sri Lankan expert in electrical engineering, our team collected the following data for his petition:

• His proposed endeavor is to continue his research on engineering novel power systems and integrating them with renewable energy to increase the penetration of renewable energy sources in order to solve challenges facing the modern power grid.
• His research advancing his proposed endeavor is of great importance because it leverages advanced methodological techniques from electrical engineering, including mathematical modeling, power system dynamics and control, and distributed system simulation to address energy grid stability issues that have far-reaching implications.
• This is why he could easily get 4 letters of recommendation from other experts, one of whom said:

“[The client’s] results enable scientists to enhance communication channels within power systems, to improve the damping on inter-area oscillations, and to prevent outages. Thus, [the client’s] work has made key contributions to securing the energy supply around the world, protecting the convenience and livelihoods of everyone who relies on power systems, and contributing immensely to the global economy.”

• His proposed endeavor also has broad implications for the United States, where the share of electricity generation from renewable sources has doubled—from 10% to 20% of the total electricity generation—between 2010 and 2020.
• Due to its clear national importance, his research has in fact been supported with funding from the government funding agencies.
• At the same time, due to his knowledge and expertise in power system dynamics and control engineering, he has been regularly invited to conduct peer reviews for authoritative journals and has completed at least 70 reviews to date for IEEE as well as for some other leading journals.
• His research has resulted in 6 peer-reviewed journal articles (all of them first-authored), 13 peer-reviewed conference papers (9 of them first-authored), and 2 technical reports and they have been cited a total of 143 times according to Google Scholar at the time of case filing, thereby demonstrating that these publications are widely recognized and relied upon in the field of electrical engineering.

So, we knew that his 6 years of labor had paid off when his case got the approval in less than 6 months. We are proud of having worked on it and we wish him the best in his future endeavors.