Dr. George Arnold - Dr. George Arnold served as the Deputy Director of Technology Services in the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) within the US Department of Commerce until he was asked to take the lead on NISTÂ’s overall effort on smart grid. He joined NIST in September 2006 after a 33 year career in industry. Dr. George Arnold previously served as a Vice-President at Bell Laboratories where he directed the company's global standards efforts and management of intellectual property. Prior to this role, Dr. George Arnold had a wide range of technical and managerial assignments at Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, and AT&T in research and development, product management, quality management and process re-engineering.
Dr. George Arnold also served as Chairman of the Board of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), a private, non-profit organization that coordinates the U.S. voluntary standardization and conformity assessment system. In addition to his NIST responsibilities, Dr. George Arnold continues to be active in external standards organizations. He currently serves as Vice-President-Policy for the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and President of the IEEE Standards Association. Dr. George Arnold received a Doctor of Engineering Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Columbia University in 1978. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE.
Michael Kanellos - Michael Kanellos is the Editor in Chief at Greentech Media, where he covers emerging technologies and companies in the green world. Prior to joining the company in 2008, he worked for CNET Network's News.com for eleven years. Among other jobs at CNET, he launched the company's push into clean technology.
He has appeared on NPR, CBS, CNBC, Fox News and other media outlets and has spoken at CES, the Japan Business Strategy Summit, Ceatec, the Irish Software Association, Stanford, U.C. Berkeley, the Flash Memory Summit and Clean Energy Venture Summit.
A graduate of Cornell University and the University of California (Hastings), he has worked as an attorney, a travel writer and a busboy at a pancake house.
Benno Ritter - Benno Ritter has more than 17 years of sales, marketing, business development, and operations experience in the semiconductor industry. In the last decade he focused his work in the market for wireless communication technologies like WLAN, Bluetooth, ZigBee, cellular, and GPS.
He was a founding member of 802.15.4 and the ZigBee Alliance. Benno Ritter joined Philips Semiconductors in 1991 in Hamburg, Germany. In 1995 he transferred to Sunnyvale, CA and was responsible for product marketing and sales of digital video processing products. Starting 1997 he took responsibility for product marketing of WLAN products and was leading the efforts for Philips in creating the activities for development of low-power/low-data rate wireless sensor networks in RF-Lite which later became the ZigBee Alliance and in introducing it into IEEE 802.15.4.
From 2002 to 2006 after joining Infineon Technologies North America, Benno Ritter was leading the regional marketing activities for Wireless Connectivity products with specific focus on Bluetooth, GPS, and WLAN. In 2006 he assumed for Infineon the global responsibility to manage the customer relationship with Intel.
Benno Ritter holds a Masters Degree in Physics from the University in Hamburg and an MBA from the San Jose State University.
Allan Schurr - Allan Schurr is responsible for IBM's energy and utilities strategy worldwide. Schurr leads IBM's work with partners, policy makers, and IBM services and technologies focused on solutions in customer management, advanced metering infrastructure, work & asset management, and distributed energy.
Allan Schurr is a frequent industry speaker and a 25-year veteran of the energy industry previously holding management positions at Itron, Silicon Energy, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) Company, and at PG&E Energy Services. Allan Schurr received his Bachelors in mechanical engineering from University of California, Davis and his Masters from St. Mary's College.
He is a registered engineer in the State of California.
Don Von Dollen - Don Von Dollen is a Program Manager at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and is responsible for the IntelliGrid program. This program focuses on accelerating the transformation of the power delivery infrastructure into the Smart Grid needed to support our future society through a unique collaboration of public and private stakeholders.
Don Von Dollen is a leader in industry Smart Grid activities, serving as Chairman of the IEEE PES Intelligent Grid Coordinating Committee, a Peer Reviewer for the DOE GridWise Program, a member of the GridWeek Organizing Committee and a Liaison Member of the GridWise Architecture Council. He coordinates EPRI's Smart Grid activities with DOE, EEI, NIST, NEMA, NARUC, NCSL and other organizations. Don Von Dollen led a team of industry experts to develop a roadmap for the development and harmonization of Smart Grid interoperability standards under contract to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). He has worked with utilities on their AMI implementations and on utility-specific Smart Grid Roadmaps.
Don Von Dollen joined EPRI in 1991 and has held a variety of positions including Applications Manager for Power Delivery and Markets, and Program Manager for Underground Transmission. He has also managed EPRI's superconductivity research program. Before joining EPRI, Don Von Dollen was a Research Engineer with Pacific Gas & Electric Company.
Don Von Dollen holds a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from the California State University, Sacramento.
Bradley Williams - Bradley Williams is currently Vice President of Oracle Utilities Global Business Unit's Product Management. He is responsible for Outage Management, Distribution Management, Mobile Workforce Management, and Work and Asset Management utility applications.
Bradley Williams had more than 23-years utility technology innovation experience. Prior to Oracle, he was a Research Director in Gartner's Energy & Utilities Industry Advisory Services focusing on utility applications of GIS, SCADA/EMS/DMS, Outage and Work Management, and Transmission & Distribution Asset Management research. Prior to being a Research Analyst, Bradley Williams directed PacifiCorp's T&D Asset Management responsible for long-term asset strategies and Business Technology that developed and implemented comprehensive IT investment programs. As Director of T&D Infrastructure Planning, Bradley Williams was responsible for PacifiCorp's Subtransmission Planning, Telecommunications, and operations Technology Development groups.
He also worked at Southern California Edison where he was involved in transmission system planning, distribution automation, and reliability programs.
Featuring the top minds from the companies, firms and government agencies charged with developing universal standards for the Smart Grid, this panel examines the necessary steps and hurdles standing between current technologies and an open- standards ecosystem, addresses the top security concerns raised by the Smart Grid, and asks what is being done to fend off attacks.
Energy used to be a one-way street. Today, it's becoming a bi-directional superhighway with utility customers finally taking charge of their power use and how much they pay for it. Instead of drilling into short-term IT issues and arcane arm-chair politicking involved in this shift, GreenBeat 2009 maps out the hottest business and technology opportunities the Smart Grid has to offer.
