Townhall with Technology Leaders: Future of SGSMA Research, Technology and Applications
Room#213
Moderator
Texas A&M University, USA
Dr. Mladen Kezunovic (Life Fellow, IEEE) received the B.Sc. degree from the University of Sarajevo, Sarajevo, Bosnia, in 1974, and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA, in 1977 and 1980, respectively. He has been with Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA, for over 35 years, where he is currently a University Distinguished Professor, Regents Professor, Eugene E. Webb Professor, and the Site Director of the ‘‘Power Engineering Research Center’’ Consortium. He served for over 30 years as the Principal Consultant of XpertPower Associates, a consulting firm specializing in power systems data analytics. His expertise is in protective relaying, automated power system disturbance analysis, computational intelligence, data analytics, and smart grids. He has authored over 600 papers, given over 120 seminars, invited lectures, and short courses, and consulted for over 60 companies worldwide. He is a CIGRE Fellow, an Honorary and Distinguished Member, a registered Professional Engineer in Texas, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
Chair, CIGRE SCB5
Rannveig S. J. Loken received her Master of Science in Electric Power Engineering from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in 1992. She works in Statnett, the TSO of Norway, and is currently the Head of Protection department in Statnett. In September 2018, she became Chair of CIGRE SC B5. Her special field of interest is protection and control for the transmission system. In addition, working in Cigre Working groups is of her great interest - she is currently a member of WG B5.69. Rannveig is in the Advisory board of PAC World, and a Committee member of IET DPSP.
CEO of Quanta Technology
Damir Novosel is the president and founder of Quanta Technology. Previously, he was vice president of ABB Automation Products and president of KEMA T&D US. Damir served on various boards and is presently a member of the Sandia National Laboratories Energy and Homeland Security External Advisory Board and Mississippi State University Industry Advisory Board. Dr. Novosel is also an adjunct professor at North Carolina State University. Damir chaired the Performance Requirement Task Team for the North American Synchro-Phasor Initiative (2004 – 2011). Damir, a member of the US National Academy of Engineers and IEEE Fellow and Life Fellow, served as the IEEE PES president and the VP of Technology. He is a secretary of the IEEE PES Executive Advisory Council, chaired the IEEE Industry Technical Support Leadership Committee, and served as a member of the IEEE Standards Board. Damir received the IEEE PES Patrick P. Ryan Meritorious Service and Leadership in Power awards. He is the CIGRE US National Committee VP of Nominations and received the CIGRE Philip Sporn and Attwood Associate awards. Dr. Novosel holds 18 US and international patents, published over 200 articles and reports, contributed to 7 books.
Damir holds PhD, MSc, and BSc degrees in electrical engineering from Mississippi State University (where he was a Fulbright scholar), the University of Zagreb, Croatia, and the University of Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina, respectively. Dr. Novosel was selected as Mississippi State University Distinguished Engineering Fellow and received the Distinguished Alumni Award.
University of Tennessee Knoxville
& Oak Ridge National Lab
Yilu Liu received her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the Ohio State University, Columbus, in 1986 and 1989, and B.S. degrees from Xian Jiaotong University, China. Dr. Liu is currently the UT-ORNL Governor’s Chair at the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. She is also the deputy director of the DOE/NSF engineering research center CURENT (curent.utk.edu). She led the effort to create the North American power grid Frequency Monitoring Network FNET/GridEye (fnetpublic.utk.edu, powerit.utk.edu). Dr. Liu’s research focus is in large grid dynamic modeling, simulations, and monitoring. Dr. Liu is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a member of the National Academy of Inventors, and a fellow of IEEE.
Chief Engineer, NERC
Mark G. Lauby is senior vice president and chief engineer at NERC. Mr. Lauby joined NERC in January 2007 and has held a number of positions, including vice president and director of Standards and vice president and director of Reliability Assessments and Performance Analysis.
In 2012, Mr. Lauby was elected to the North American Energy Standards Board and was appointed to the Department of Energy’s Electric Advisory Committee by the Secretary of Energy in 2014. Mr. Lauby has served as chair and is a life member of the International Electricity Research Exchange and served as chair of a number of IEEE working groups. From 1999 to 2007, Mr. Lauby was an appointed member of the Board of Excellent Energy International Co., LTD, an energy service company based in Thailand. He has been recognized for his technical achievements in many technical associations, including the 1992 IEEE Walter Fee Young Engineer of the Year Award. He was named a Fellow by IEEE in November 2011 for “leadership in the development and application of techniques for bulk power system reliability.” In 2014, Mr. Lauby was awarded the IEEE Power and Energy Society’s Roy Billinton Power System Reliability Award. In 2020, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) elected Mr. Lauby as a member, citing his development and application of techniques for electric grid reliability analysis. He is also a member of the IEEE Power & Energy Society (PES) Executive Advisory Committee, focused on providing strategic support to the PES Board of Directors.
Prior to joining NERC, Mr. Lauby worked for the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) for 20 years, holding a number of senior positions, including: director, Power Delivery and Markets; managing director, Asia, EPRI International; and manager, Power System Engineering in the Power System Planning and Operations Program. Mr. Lauby began his electric industry career in 1979 at the Mid-Continent Area Power Pool in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His responsibilities included transmission planning, power system reliability assessment, and probabilistic evaluation.
Mr. Lauby is the author of more than 100 technical papers on the subjects of power system reliability, expert systems, transmission system planning, and power system numerical analysis techniques. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota. In addition, Mr. Lauby attended the London Business School Accelerated Development Program as well as the Executive Leadership Program at Harvard Business School.
Meinberg USA Inc.
Allan Armstrong received his BSEE from MIT in 1986 and worked in integrated circuit development for optoelectronics, test & measurement, telecom and datacom, digital video, frequency synthesis and time synchronization. In 2019, Allan joined Meinberg where he established the US subsidiary, Meinberg USA Inc. Meinberg is the world leader in network time synchronization, serving applications in data centers, telecom, defense, financial services, broadcast & media, and the power grid. Meinberg USA has an engineering team focused on the power grid which has recently added IEC 61850 MMS and HSR & PRP support to Meinberg time servers and contributes to Meinberg’s work to protect time servers against network and GPS attacks. The Meinberg USA team is involved in many power grid conferences, including NASPI, PACWorld, DistribuTech, and IEEE SGSMA.