Meet our PES University Presenters

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Meet the PES University Instructors

Webinar & Tutorial Instructors Wanted

PES University is honored to have many talented and knowledgeable engineers providing insights.

Anula Abeygunawardana

Anula Abeygunawardana received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Politecnico di Milano, Italy in 2008. She has been a senior research fellow at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Australia since 2011. Prior to joining QUT, she was with the Center for Energy and Environmental Markets (CEEM), University of New South Wales, Australia. From 2008 to 2010, she worked for the Politecnico di Milano, Italy. From 2002 to 2006she was with the Asian Regional Research Program on “Energy Environment and Climate”, at Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand. Previously, she worked as a senior lecturer at the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. Her research interests include power system planning, electricity markets, and energy and the environment.

Julio Romero Agüero

Dr. Julio Romero Agüero is Vice President, Strategy and Business Innovation at Quanta Technology. He has 22 years of industry experience and specializes in grid modernization, technology strategy, Smart Grid, planning, reliability, operations, and analysis of power distribution systems, and integration of distributed energy resources and emerging technologies. He has developed solutions in these areas for utilities in the USA, Canada, Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE and Chair of the IEEE Distribution Subcommittee. He has served as Chair of the IEEE Working Group on Distributed Resources Integration, Editor of IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery and IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid. He is Adjunct Professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and former Commissioner of the National Energy Commission of Honduras.

Ramiar Alaei

Ramiar Alaei received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in power electrical engineering from Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), Tehran, Iran, in 2009 and 2011, respectively. Recently, he successfully defended his doctorate in electrical engineering (energy systems) at University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

His research interests include high-power converters and novel power transmission schemes.

Ali Arefi

Ali Arefi (SM’14) received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering in 2011. He has six years’ experiences with electric distribution industry. He has been the supervisor for 5 industry-funded research projects in different aspects of distribution networks. He was a Research Fellow at Queensland University of Technology from 2012 to 2015, developing an automated tool for optimal investment strategy in electric distribution networks over large areas and long planning horizons. Now, he is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Engineering and Information Technology, Murdoch University, Perth, Australia. His research interests are in the areas of electric delivery planning, state estimation, power quality, and energy efficiency.

Steven W. Blume

Steven is the Founder, President and CEO of Applied Professional Training, Inc. He has led APT into a world-class technical training company servicing the electric power and telecommunications industries. He is a registered professional engineer with a Master’s degree specializing in electric power systems and a Bachelor’s degree specializing in telecommunications. Mr. Blume has extensive experience in power systems planning, design and construction of major lines and substations plus dispatch, protective relaying, and safety. His telecom experience includes fiber optics, microwave, radio, power line carrier and copper systems in high voltage environments. He holds many professional certificates, memberships, and is highly recognized in both the electric power and telecommunications industries. This unique combination of knowledge and experience makes him an excellent instructor for this course.

Douglas A. Bowman

Doug is a Lead Engineer in the R & D and Special Studies group at Little Rock, AR based Southwest Power Pool, where he has served in various engineering roles within SPP’s engineering business. Doug’s current responsibilities include various technical studies, research in power system analysis methods, technologies and trends, and the development of SPP Engineering staff. Doug represents the company as an industry advisor at various external technical and R&D venues such as Electric Power Institute (EPRI) and the Power Systems Engineering Research Center (PSERC).

Karen Butler-Purry

Dr. Karen L. Butler-Purry is a 1981 honor graduate of Plaquemine High School. She was awarded a B.S. (summa cum laude) from Southern University in Baton Rouge, a M.S. degree from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Ph.D. from Howard University in Washington, D.C., all in Electrical Engineering.

Butler-Purry began her 20+ years career at Texas A&M University with an initial appointment as visiting assistant professor of electrical engineering in 1994. She currently serves as Associate Provost for Graduate and Professional Studies, and Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. She will assume the role of interim Vice President for Research starting June 1st. Further she served as Associate Department Head for the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department from 2008-2010 and Assistant Dean of Graduate Programs for the College of Engineering from 2001-2004. She is a registered professional engineer in the states of LA, TX and MS.

In addition, she has served in many capacities on committees for the college, university, and professional societies. Butler-Purry developed a successful research program with funding from federal agencies such as National Science Foundation and Office of Naval Research, and industry funding from electric utility companies. She has supervised and funded over 40 graduate and 65 undergraduate research students. Also she has been involved in fellowship and education program projects with the National Science Foundation and the Department of Education and directed several of these programs that target recruitment, retention and advancement of pre-college, college, and graduate students in STEM fields.

She received the National Science Foundation Faculty Career Award (1995) and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award (1999). Butler-Purry has received numerous teaching and service awards including the 2005 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Mentor Award for efforts to mentor students from underrepresented groups and for leadership in promoting PhD careers for them in electrical engineering and computer sciences.

Butler-Purry is extremely interested in attracting the next generation of minority and female students into Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields. She currently leads a National Science Foundation funded project studying the use of video games to transform student learning and impact the attitude of college and high school students toward electrical and computer engineering. Also she serves on the Advisory Council for the Young Women’s Preparatory College Academy in Houston, Texas.”

Luis Felipe Gaitan Cubides

Student of Electrical Engineering in the Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas. He led the PES student chapter during 2014 as vice-chair and in 2015 as president of the chapter and the student branch. During his administration, the IEEE student branch, achieved the Second Place Case of Success Contest in the RRR 2015, Second Place in the TISP Contest IEEE R9, First Place in the Success Contest in the IEEE National Meeting 2015, First Place in the R9 Membership Contest, and the Exemplary Student Branch Award in R9. In addition, the PES chapter was in the top 10 of the PES High Performing Student Branch Chapter Program. He is a member of the IEEE PES Membership Development Committee and editor of the IEEE Magazine “Enlaces”.

Ratan Das

Dr. Ratan Das is the founder of icaPower LLC, which serves customers in power system protection, automation and control. He was the chair of the IEEE PSRC WG K15 on Centralized Substation Protection and Control. He was a guest-editor of the special section on “Frontiers of Power System Protection” in The IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery August 2016 Issue. The special section also contains the IEEE PSRC WG K15 paper on CPC which received the 2016 IEEE PES Technical Committee Prize Paper award.

Dr. Das received his B.E.E. (Hons.) degree from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India, and M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. He has worked in power system protection, automation and control for 30 years: with ABB Inc., USA, for 18 years and with NTPC Ltd., India, for 11 years. Dr. Das holds four patents and has contributed to over 30 publications.

Consuela Duenas

Consuela Duenas is a telecommunications and power industries executive, with more than twenty-five years of experience in management, operations and large¬ scale projects in both, private companies and the public sector. She holds a master’s degree in Business Administration and a bachelor degree in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering.

She has been an international speaker at various events on telecommunications matters, and authored several articles for specialized newspapers and for key internationaiiTU and IBC events.

In late 1994, she was elected President of the Ecuadorian Telecommunication Commission of the Electric and Electronic Engineering Association, to represent all its members,nationwide,to draft the new telecom regulations.

In 2012, she joined Executive IDE BUSSINES SCHOOL, the highest ranked management school in Ecuador, as an executive education lecturer in management control. Since late 2013, she is QUANTA SERVICES’ Country Manager in Ecuador.

Babak Enayati

Babak Enayati received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Clarkson University, Potsdam, NY in 2009. He joined National Grid, USA in 2010 and is currently the Manager of the Technology Deployment team, which is responsible for development and implementation of the Transmission Network modernization strategy. During the past ten years, Babak has worked on Distributed Energy Resources interconnections, power system protection, control of microgrids, and Smart Grid. He joined Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2006 and currently is a Senior IEEE Member. Babak currently serves as the IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES) Governing Board Member-at-Large. Babak is also the Vice Chair of the IEEE Standards Coordinating Committee 21 (SCC21) and IEEE 1547, Standard for Interconnecting Distributed Energy Resources with Electric Power Systems. Babak is a registered Professional Engineer (PE) in the state of Massachusetts.

Joe Fox

Joe Fox is presently Business Development Specialist for Siemens’ Energy Management Transmission Solutions business unit. Prior to joining Siemens, Mr. Fox held various technical, commercial and leadership positions at alternative energy and diversified technology companies, focusing on applications engineering, solution development and business development related to power electronics, renewable energy, and energy storage.

Mr. Fox holds a Bachelor’s of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin – Madison, and has spoken at various industry events including IEEE T&D, AWEA, ESA and EUCI. Mr. Fox is a member of IEEE.

Jason Fuller

Jason Fuller joined the staff at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) as a research engineer in 2009. He is an active member in IEEE, Chair of the Distribution System Analysis Subcommittee and Chair of the Test Feeder Working Group. Mr. Fuller’s area of interest includes distribution automation and analysis, and integration of advanced distribution-level technologies such as distributed generation and demand response. His main area of work has been in the development and application of GridLAB-D, a power-flow simulation environment designed for smart grid applications and developed at PNNL. He is currently the Technical Group Manager of the Electricity Infrastructure group, a dynamic team of 70+ power engineers working on cutting edge power system research.

Frank M. Gonzales

Frank M. Gonzales, P.E. received a B.S. degree in electrical and computer engineering with a minor in scientific computer programming from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona in 2002. He received a M.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California in 2010. He is a licensed professional engineer in the state of California. He is currently a Senior Engineer at Southern California Edison in Rosemead, CA.

Nikos D. Hatziargyriou

Nikos D. Hatziargyriou is Chairman and CEO of the Hellenic Distribution Network Operator. Since 1984 he is with the Power Division of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of the National Technical University of Athens and since 1995 he is full professor in Power Systems. From February 2007 to September 2012, he was Deputy CEO of the Public Power Corporation (PPC) of Greece, responsible for Transmission and Distribution Networks. He is Fellow Member of IEEE, past Chair of the Power System Dynamic Performance Committee and past Chair of CIGRE SC C6 “Distribution Systems and Distributed Generation”. He is Editor in Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Power Systems and of more than 200 journal and 500 proceedings papers.

Michael I. Henderson

Michael I. Henderson received two Master of Engineering degrees, Electrical Power Engineering in 1977 and Electrical Engineering in 1976, both from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA. In 1975, he earned a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Polytechnic Institute of New York (now NYU) where he served as an Adjunct Lecturer from 1993 through 1999. In July 2016 Mike became the Editor in Chief of Power and Energy Magazine and, since July 1999, he has been a Director in the System Planning Department at ISO New England. Previously, he had more than 22 years of experience at the New York Power Authority, Long Island Lighting Company, and American Electric Power. Mike has presented technical seminars as well as over six-dozen panel, technical papers, and tutorials at IEEE and other forums. Mike is a registered Professional Engineer, an IEEE Fellow, and a native son of Brooklyn, New York.

Matthias Hilpert

MSc Mechanical Engineering and Business Administration, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany (2007)

Since 07/2014: Product Marketing Manager Precision Measurement, Isabellenhütte Isotek Corporation

2007-2013: Senior Product Manager, Monier GmbH Germany

Doug Houseman

Doug Houseman has been working in the industry for more than 40 years. He started working on Demand Response and DER issues in the 1980s. He is a senior member of PES, a NIST Fellow and the lead author of the Distribution Utility Technology Roadmap. He has worked with major utilities globally over the last 20 years. Doug currently serves as the Utility Modernization Lead for Burns & McDonnell.

Pierre Huyn

Pierre Huyn has over 30 years of research and advanced development experience in data management, big data analytics, and software engineering. His current interest is in big data architectures for IoT and deep learning for time series data in the domain of renewable energy.

Dragan Jovcic

Dragan Jovcic (S’97-M’00-SM’06) obtained a Diploma Engineer degree in Control Engineering from the University of Belgrade, Serbia in 1993 and a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Auckland, New Zealand in 1999. He is currently a professor with the University of Aberdeen, UK. In 2008 he held a visiting professor post at McGill University, Canada. Prof Jovcic is a senior member of IEEE, IEEE PES Distinguished Lecturer, and editor of IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery. Professor Jovcic is a member several CIGRE working groups and chairman of B4.76. He is founder and director of Aberdeen HVDC research centre. Prof Jovcic has around 120 publications and he is author of a book on HVDC: “High Voltage Direct Current Transmission: Converters, Systems and DC Grids”, Wiley, 2015.

Paul D. Judge

Paul D. Judge (M’13) received the B.Eng. (Hons.) degree in electrical engineering from the University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland, in 2012, and the Ph.D. degree in power converter design for HVDC applications in 2016 from the Control & Power Group in Imperial College London, London, U.K., where he is currently a Research Associate. His research interests include power converter design and control, as well as power system integration aspects of HVDC technology.

Iman Khosravi

Iman Khosravi is a Business Development Specialist for Siemens’ Energy Management Transmission Solutions business unit. Prior to this, he held various positions at Siemens including: network consulting, technical sales, focusing on power systems planning and flexible AC transmission Systems.

Sila Kiliccote

Sila Kiliccote is the managing director of grid innovations at the Stanford and the leader of the Grid Integration, Systems and Mobility research at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. She has worked as a demand response expert at Google and spent over 10 years at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) as a deputy of the Demand Response Research Center leading the grid integration initiatives. At LBNL, she worked with a team to develop OpenADR. Kiliccote holds an Electrical Engineering degree from the University of New Hampshire and a Master of Building Science degree from Carnegie Mellon University.

Sergey Kynev

Sergey Kynev received the B.Sc degree in Electrical Engineering and the M.Sc in Power Transmission Systems from St. Petersburg Polytechnical University, Russia in 2008 and 2010 respectively. He worked for HVDC Research Institute in Russia prior to joining Siemens in 2011. He is currently a system engineer for FACTS and synchronous condenser with Siemens in Germany.

Gerard Ledwich

Gerard Ledwich (SM’89) received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Newcastle, Newcastle, Australia, in 1976. He has been Chair Professor in Electrical Power Engineering at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Australia, since 1998, and was Head of the Electrical Engineering Department, University of Newcastle, Newcastle, Australia, from 1997 to 1998. Previously, he was with the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, from 1976 to 1994. His research interests are in the areas of power systems, power electronics, and controls. Prof. Ledwich is a Fellow of the Institute of Engineers, Australia

Dr. Raka Levi

Dr. Raka Levi is an Electrical power engineer with over 30 years of technical experience in the field of asset management, condition assessment, power instrumentation, diagnostics and monitoring, tap-changer testing, and consulting services.

Created a European asset managers’ network, the AMforum.org – that counts over 200 engineers from most of European utilities. Convenes Working Group for the DRM testing of OLTCs. Consultant and main contributor in the development of OLTC diagnostic methodology for a Swedish instrument manufacturer DV Power. Created and has been running the “Tap Changer University” and “Tap Changer College” worldwide seminars.

Bruce Mackie

Bruce Mackie is a registered Professional Engineer in the state of Tennessee who has worked at Nashville Electric Service {NES) for the past twenty-nine years. He has spent the last twenty-two years in the System Protection and Communications group at NES including 16 years as the supervisor. Bruce obtained his Bachelors of Engineering degree from Vanderbilt University in 1987 and his MS degree in Engineering Management from the University of Tennessee in 2007. Bruce is a Senior Member of the IEEE and participates in the PSRC including being the vice-chair of the Line Protection Subcommittee. Bruce is a Planning Committee member for the Georgia Tech Protective Relay Conference.

Vahid Madani

Vahid Madani, Ph.D., Fellow IEEE is a Principal scientist and technology engineer for advanced power systems applications at Pacific Gas & Electric Co., headquartered in San Francisco, California, USA. His experience spans across System Planning, Operation, Protection and Control, and Instrumentation. He has been responsible for major initiatives with system-wide deployment within PG&E requiring R&D, Proof of Concept demonstrations, Standardization, and Compliance.

Dr. Madani is a contributor to PES both at Technical Council and as a member of the PES Governing Board, and has volunteered as the Chair of technical committees on Standards, PES Fellows, and in providing tutorial lectures in power systems. He has held many technical and leadership positions within the WECC (Western Electricity Coordinating Council) Reliability, the US DOE / North American Synchrophasor Initiative (NASPI), and internationally. Vahid has many publications in professional journals including IEEE Spectrum and Power and Energy magazine, and has co-authored text books and reference handbooks.

Dr. Madani is a Fellow of IEEE and IEEE Distinguished Lecturer, Adjunct Faculty, a registered Electrical Engineer in California, and holds US and International patents.

John D. McDonald

John McDonald, P.E., IEEE Life Fellow, is Smart Grid Business Development Leader for GE Power’s Grid Solutions business. John has 45 years of experience in the electric utility transmission and distribution industry. John received his BSEE and MSEE (Power Engineering) degrees from Purdue University, and an MBA (Finance) degree from the University of California-Berkeley. John is a Life Fellow of IEEE, and was awarded the IEEE Millennium Medal, the IEEE Power & Energy Society (PES) Excellence in Power Distribution Engineering Award, the IEEE PES Substations Committee Distinguished Service Award, and the IEEE PES Meritorious Service Award. John is Past President of the IEEE PES, a member of the IEEE Global Public Policy Committee, and the Past Chair of the IEEE PES Substations Committee. John was the IEEE Division VII Director and on the IEEE Board of Directors. John was on the Board of Governors of the IEEE-SA (Standards Association), focusing on long-term IEEE Smart Grid standards strategy. John received the 2009 Outstanding Electrical and Computer Engineer Award from Purdue University. John teaches a Smart Grid course at the Georgia Institute of Technology, a Smart Grid course for GE, and substation automation, distribution SCADA and communications courses for various IEEE PES local chapters as an IEEE PES Distinguished Lecturer. John has published one hundred papers and articles in the areas of SCADA, SCADA/EMS, SCADA/DMS and communications, and has co-authored five books.

Davis Montenegro Martinez

Davis Montenegro-Martinez serves as Engineer/Scientist III at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) in the areas of power system modeling, analysis and high-performance computing. He received his degree in electronic engineering from Universidad Santo Tomás, Bogotá, Colombia (2004); he is M.Sc. in electrical engineering from Universidad de Los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia(2012). He received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Universidad de Los Andes (2015), and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University Grenoble-Alpes, France (2015).

Before joining EPRI, Davis served for 10 years as a lecturer for Universidad Santo Tomas in Colombia, during this time he was also technology consultant in the areas of industrial automation, software and electronic hardware design focused in the electric power industry specifically in monitoring and control for calibration laboratories.

His expertise in parallel computing techniques is being used at EPRI for incorporating multi-core processing to power system analysis methods such as QSTS, reducing the computational time required to perform these analyses using standard computing architectures.

Brian Nelson

Brian is with National Electricity Market Management Company (NEMMCo) in Market Development when it was formed in 1997, leading to the commencement of the National Electricity Market (NEM) in December 1998. He moved back into a more technical role in the Planning Department where he managed production of the Statement of Opportunities, the Annual Interconnector Review and the first National Transmission Network Development Plan. Following formation of the Australian Energy Market Commission and Australian Energy Regulator, Brian moved into the new role of Head of Regulatory Affairs and Compliance covering rule changes, rules compliance and participant registration. When AEMO was formed in 2009, Brian continued to manage rule changes and participant registrations which now covered the gas wholesale and retail markets operated by AEMO. He moved to the Senior Manager Electricity Market Operations Performance, managing development and performance of the central dispatch process and reviewing significant market operation events and incidents. He also managed the Market Analysis team, which was responsible for developing market analytics and insights into the operation of the market. Brian is currently working in the Market Design team, managing AEMO’s input into a number of rule changes and reviews, providing advice and expertise internally and to stakeholders on matters relating to market design, and mentoring the next generation of energy market experts.

Luis (Nando) Ochoa

Luis (Nando) Ochoa is Professor of Smart Grids and Power Systems at The University of Melbourne, Australia and part-time Professor of Smart Grids at The University of Manchester, UK. His expertise in network integration of low carbon technologies and his extensive portfolio of industrial and academic projects have led to 140+ publications, 60+ technical reports, and one patent filed by Psymetrix Ltd. Prof Ochoa is an IEEE PES Distinguished Lecturer and has also several leadership roles within IEEE PES, including Member-At-Large of the Governing Board and Editorial Board Member of the IEEE Power and Energy Magazine. Prof Ochoa is an IEEE Senior Member since 2012. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering from UNI (Peru), and a Research MSc and a PhD in Electrical Power Engineering, both from UNESP Ilha Solteira (Brazil).

Brent Olsen

Brent has 16 years of experience working at Electric Utilities Arizona Public Service (APS), Salt River Project (SRP) and Portland General Electric (PGE). He has degrees in Electrical Engineering, Energy Policy and Management, Spanish, MBA & PMP. He has been a Distribution Engineer, Transmission Engineer, Generation engineer and is currently a Project Manager for Dispatchable Standby Generation. He teaches basics of electricity courses at Portland General Electric, Clackamas Community College and a variety of other groups. Brent lives in Portland with his wife and 3 energetic boys.

Jim Parks

Jim Parks is a program manager in the Energy Research and Development department at the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD). He just completed a $308 million smart grid initiative (SmartSacramento®) with over 40 individual projects ranging from smart meters and distribution automation to customer programs including demand response and energy efficiency. He currently oversees energy efficiency and smart grid R&D projects. Prior to his current assignment, he worked with emerging energy efficiency technologies, electric transportation, energy efficiency program development, energy efficiency program operations and transmission planning.

Vajira Pathirana

Vajira Pathirana has been with Teshmont Consultants since 2004, where he currently serves as the Chief Engineer of the company. He has over 20 years of experience in planning, designing, specification, construction and commissioning of high voltage transmission systems including HVDC systems. His experience also covers power system protection, power system modeling, electromagnetic transient simulation studies, and project planning and coordination. He received his B.SC. degree in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering from the University of Moratuwa in 1996 and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Manitoba in 2004. Vajira is an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Manitoba.

Ricardo Cunha Perez

Ricardo Cunha Perez has a B.Sc. Degree in Electrical Engineering with an emphasis in Power Systems from Itajubá Federal University and earned his Master’s Degree (M.Sc.) in the fields of Electrical Engineering and Optimization by the Rio de Janeiro Federal University. Mr. Perez has been working for PSR since 2009 as a member of the generation & transmission consulting group; responsible for many studies, including the development of a model for power transmission expansion planning used by the WECC in US. Mr. Perez works with the following models: (i) OPTGEN (for optimizing the expansion of generation systems and regional interconnections), (ii) NETPLAN (for optimizing the transmission system expansion) and (iii) the dispatch model SDDP used in more than 60 countries.

Rodrigo A. Ramos

Rodrigo A. Ramos (SM’08) received his B.Sc. (1997), M.Sc. (1999), and D.Sc. (2012) degrees from the Engineering School of Sao Carlos (EESC), a unit of the University of Sao Paulo (USP), Brazil. He is currently an Associate Professor at the Electrical Engineering Department of EESC/USP. His research interests include power system stability considering the presence of renewable and distributed generation.

Ian Ramsay

Ian Ramsay has worked for Siemens for almost 29 years. His roles have been varied including: Engineering, Commissioning, Project Management, Proposal Management and Sales and Business Development. His primary focus has been with FACTS Technology and GIS (Gas Insulated Switchgear).

Daniel J. Sullivan

Daniel J. Sullivan, PE currently manages MEPPI’s Power Electronics Product Line, providing technical leadership and commercial management of Mitsubishi Electric’s Flexible AC Transmission Systems (FACTS) and High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) business in North America. In Dan’s current leadership role, he developed system engineering and sales teams to assure full commitment to customers and technical expertise of applied FACTS (SVC/STATCOM) and HVDC systems from initial planning stages through design, construction, commissioning, and post-installation service/maintenance. Dan joined MEPPI in 2002 in the System Studies Department where he lead and conducted a wide array of power system analyses related to system dynamic performance, power flow, voltage stability, and electromagnetic transients.

He has authored technical IEEE papers and publications and lectured at universities and technical organizations on topics such as Dynamic Reactive Power Control, Static Var Compensators, STATCOM, and HVDC. Dan is a Senior Member of IEEE and held leadership roles in IEEE’s Power and Energy Subcommittees and Working groups on FACTS. He earned a BSEET degree from the Pennsylvania State University and a MSEE degree from the University of Pittsburgh.

Thierry Van Cutsem

Thierry Van Cutsem (F’ 05) received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Liege, Belgium, in 1979 and 1984, respectively. He is currently a Research Director of the Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS) and an Adjunct Professor at the Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the same university. His research interests include power system dynamics, security, monitoring, control, and simulation. He served as Secretary, Vice-Chair, and Chair of the IEEE Power System Dynamic Performance Committee.

Chandrasekar (Chandra) Venkatraman

Chandrasekar (Chandra) Venkatraman is Principal Research Scientist at Hitachi America Research and Development in the Big Data Laboratory focusing on Industrial IoT Architectures and Analytics for Energy. Prior to joining he was Chief Scientist at FogHorn Systems – Palo Alto based start-up focusing on Big Data Analytics and applications platform for Industrial Internet of Things (IoT). Chandra was with Hewlett Packard Labs, Palo Alto for almost two decades working on Information architectures, distributed computing, in-home network, ePrint architecture, sensor networks and Internet of Things. He has authored over 15 patents and a number of research papers and talks.

Ali Vojdani

Ali Vojdani is the Founder and CEO of GridBright (gridbright.com), specializing in grid management and integration of distributed and renewable energy resources. He is also the Founder and the President of BetterGrids Foundation (bettergrids.com), a nonprofit public charity dedicated to support of GRID DATA Repository to benefit grid research and education. Earlier, he was the Founder and CEO of Utility Integration Solutions (UISOL) that was acquired by Alstom in 2011. He has 40 years of experience in the computer application in the utility industry as part of his professional career at GridBright, ALSTOM, UISOL, Vitria Technology, Perot Systems, EPRI, PG&E, and McGill University. Dr. Vojdani has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from McGill, and has authored over 60 technical publications.

Dr. Artemis Voulkidis

Dr. Artemis Voulkidis holds his Dipl.-Ing. Degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering since 2007, his M.S. Degree in Technoeconomics since 2010 and his PhD degree since 2013 on autonomous wireless communications with emphasis on WSNs, all from NTUA. Currently, he works as a Technical Director in Synelixis Solutions SA. He has a background in autonomous, game theoretic optimization and clustering techniques for wireless sensor networks. His main research interests are related to adaptive optimization in cloud computing environments, optimization of next-generation communication technologies and cyber-physical security. The results of his scientific research have been published in high-impact journals of the ACM and IEEE communities, while he also provides reviews for ACM and IEEE journals and conferences.

Costas Vournas

Costas Vournas received the Diploma of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering from National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) in 1975, the M.Sc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada in 1978, and the NTUA Doctor of Engineering degree in 1986. He is currently Professor in the Electrical Energy Systems Laboratory of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering of NTUA. His research interests are in the area of power system dynamics, stability and control and include voltage stability and security analysis, wind generator integration in power systems, novel control applications in the distribution and transmission grid, as well as the effect of deregulation on power system operation and control. He is IEEE Fellow since 2005, Chair of Power Tech International Steering Committee and Vice-Chair of Power Dynamic Performance Committee of PES.

Nathan Wallace

Nathan has B.S. in Electrical Engineering, a M.S. in Engineering, and a Ph.D. in Engineering Cyberspace from Louisiana Tech University. He started his career as an Intern with Entergy’s Relay Settings and Configuration group. He then joined a utility as an Associate Engineer performing field maintenance of system protection and communication equipment. After seeing the grid’s growing reliance on cyber technologies, he pursued a graduate degree focusing on power system cybersecurity where he also worked as a digital forensics examiner. Nathan Wallace is currently with Cybirical, a member of the IEEE Power & Energy Society and the Computer Society, and a member of the IEEE-PES technical committee on Power System Communications & Cybersecurity (PSCC).

Dr. Wilsun Xu

Dr. Wilsun Xu, is a professor at the University of Alberta, Canada. He obtained PhD from the University of British Columbia, Canada in 1989 and worked in BC Hydro from 1990 to 1996. Dr. Xu is an expert in power quality and an IEEE fellow for contributions to the field of power system harmonics. In recent years, Dr. Xu championed international efforts to expand the use of PQ monitoring and analysis to areas such as incipient fault detection. Driving by this vision, he helped to establish the IEEE PES WG on Power Quality Data Analytics in 2014 and served as its first chair.

Mike Zhou

Dr. Mike Zhou obtained his B.S. from Hunan University, M.S. and PhD. from Tsinghua University. He was an assistant professor at University of Saskatchewan 1990-1992, served as the VP in charging of power distribution system software development at EDSA Micro Corporation 1992-1997. He was a Senior Computer System Architect with TIBCO Software Inc. 2000-2014. He joined State Grid Electric Power Research Institute of China as a Chief Scientist in 2014, sponsored by the “Thousand Talents Plan” program. His current research interests include Big Data and deep learning technologies, and their application to large-scale power grid on-line analysis.

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