Haukur (Hawk) Asgeirsson is the founder of Hawk Utility Consulting that is currently providing consulting to an EV DC fast charging company and early stage Techstar companies in Southeast Michigan. In 2016 Hawk retired as the Manager of Power Systems Technologies at DTE Energy Company. In that position, he was responsible for employing Distributed Energy Resources (DER) into the T&D planning and operating process, managing all DER interconnections and grants related to plug-in electric vehicles, energy storage and the effect of distributed resources interconnecting to the grid. Hawk was also instrumental in demonstrating and implementing low cost smart grid sensor into the distribution system using a Distributed Energy Distribution Management system (DERMS) to supplement traditional SCADA system. Upon his retirement, his group had deployed enough sensors to provide 100% monitoring coverage of the electric distribution system.

Dr. Stan Atcitty received his BS and MS degree in electrical engineering from the New Mexico State University in 1993 and 1995 respectively. He received his PhD from Virginia Tech University in 2006. He is presently a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories in the Energy Storage Technology & Systems department. He has worked at Sandia for over 25 years. His interest in research is power electronics necessary for integrating energy storage and distributed generation with the electric utility grid. He leads the power electronics subprogram as part of the DOE Office of Electricity Energy Storage Program.

Rich Bauer is the Associate Director of Reliability Risk Management – Event Analysis for the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), where he promotes understanding and learning from events and occurrences that are experienced on the Bulk Electric System. The Reliability Risk Management group performs forensic analysis of major system disturbances as well as cause analysis of events through the NERC Event Analysis Process.

Rich’s career in the electric utility industry spans more than 35 years, and includes experience in System Protection and Communications, Hydro Production, Substation Apparatus, Transmission Operations and Transmission Planning. Rich has taught System Protection classes at Washington State University’s Hands on Relay School and has lectured widely on system events. Rich participates on the NERC System Protection and Control Subcommittee and the NERC Event Analysis Subcommittee as well as numerous working groups and task forces.

David Bianco is a Principal Engineer at National Grid. As a member of the National Grid team, David has performed roles in Distribution Planning, Substation Engineering, Power Generation and Power Supply. Currently as a Project Engineer in Substation Engineering, his interests include Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) with a focus on Control System co-optimization of reliability and markets.

As a Principal Engineer he Engineers, Procures and supports Construction, Commissioning, and Acceptance process for scopes of work that involve substations. Including Battery Energy Storage Systems. This occurs after system planning processes and benefit cost analysis are completed.

David has a MS degree in Power Systems and is a Registered Professional Engineer.

Daniel Borneo is an Engineering Program/Project Lead at Sandia National Laboratory (SNL) where he leads a projects team that is part of Sandia’s Grid-Tied Electrical Energy Storage Program. The main emphasis of Dan’s work is to collaborate with utilities, industry partners, academia, and State Energy offices to develop Energy Storage (ES) projects and bring innovative electrical energy storage technologies to commercialization. He also specializes in the commissioning of ES systems, and does work both Nationally and Internationally.
Dan earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of New Mexico, focusing on power and controls. He holds a professional engineering license in the state of New Mexico.

Michael Bowes is an Associate Engineer and acting DG Ombudsman at Sustainable CUNY of the City University of New York. Michael specializes in energy storage permitting in New York City and works closely with the NYC Fire Department (FDNY), Department of Buildings (DOB) and Mayor’s Office of Sustainability to support safe deployment of ESS in the City.

Ken Boyce is a Corporate Fellow in the William Henry Merrill Society at UL LLC, reserved for the highest level of technical achievement, external recognition, and contributions to UL’s Safety Mission. He also serves as global Principal Engineer Director, Energy & Power Technologies, overseeing standards development and technical operations for renewable energy technologies, batteries and energy storage systems, advanced technology grid and Smart City infrastructure, electric vehicle and e-mobility systems, commercial drones, autonomous vehicles, fuel cells, power distribution, factory automation, hazardous locations, and related equipment. Ken is very active in the standards and code development community, and serves as the Chairman of National Electrical Code Panel 1 and the Solar Energy Industries Association Codes & Standards Working Group. He represents UL in global energy initiatives, and serves as the Chairman of UL’s Energy Council. He works closely with the U.S. Department of Energy, National Laboratories and academic institutions to advance scientific knowledge in the energy sector, including leading a number of significant renewable energy research projects and serving on the DuraMAT Consortium Industry Advisory Board. He is a frequent speaker and lecturer on energy, safety and risk management and technology at global symposia, government events and universities. Ken has decades of leadership experience in safety engineering across many sectors, and is an active advocate for consumer safety and STEM education. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology and is a Registered Professional Engineer in Illinois.

Marc Chupka was named Vice President of Research and Programs at the U.S. Energy Storage Association in February 2020. He leads ESA’s Corporate Responsibility Initiative Task Force, directs the activities of the Technical Advisory Council, and manages the Association’s educational materials, industry data, and analytical resources to support ESA’s policy priorities.

Marc has over 30 years of experience analyzing and advising on the market impacts of both domestic and international energy and environmental policy, including serving as the acting Assistant Secretary of Energy for Policy and International Affairs for the U.S. Department of Energy and chief economist at the White House Office of Environmental Policy. He also served as staff analyst for the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Economic Committee, and has worked in the private sector for several energy consulting firms. For the past 18 years, Marc consulted on a broad range of energy issues for utilities, trade associations, and investors as a principal at The Brattle Group, most recently focusing on issues related to grid resilience, clean energy, and climate policy.

Dave Conover has graduate and undergraduate degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the Catholic University of America (CUA) and while retired from PNNL volunteers as a resource to PNNL as an Emeritus Scientist/Engineer. During his career he primarily focused on the development, adoption, implementation of and compliance with codes, standards and regulations with respect to energy efficiency and safety associated with the built environment and the application and use of new technology for acceptance within the building regulatory community. In retirement he volunteers at Fairfax INOVA hospital in CVOR Pre-OP, is a STEM mentor to four 4th grade science classes and serves as Chair of the Fairfax County Virginia Building and Fire Code Appeals Board. An avid triathlete for almost 30 years, he will represent the United States in 2020 competing in the Olympic distance triathlon event at the ITU World Championships in Edmonton, Alberta.

Grant Davis is an energy storage engineer in Southern California Edison’s Asset & Engineering Strategy group, working on the deployment and evaluation of utility-owned energy storage projects. Grant holds a BS in Electrical Engineering and a MBA from California State University Long Beach, and is a licensed Professional Engineer.

Benjamin Ditch is a Sr. Lead Research Engineer at FM Global and has an M.S. in Fire Protection Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester MA, USA. Mr. Ditch is the Technical Team Leader of the Large-Scale Fires Team with 20 years of experience in fire hazard analysis and specialty fire protection system design. He is responsible for the development and implementation of large-scale testing, including specialty hazards such as ignitable liquids, non-standard storage, and new technologies. Mr. Ditch’s current research interests include protection for automatic storage and retrieval systems, energy storage systems, and lithium ion batteries.

Mr. Fioravanti is the Director of Transportation Electrification at Quanta Technology. He has worked with major manufacturers, utilities, state/federal agencies, and developers to understand and deploy advanced energy systems. He currently focuses his efforts on electric transportation, EV infrastructure, electricity storage, and distributed energy resources - evaluating electricity grid impacts and linking the technologies to grid modernization, utility of the future initiatives. In his roles, he helped develop and deploy utility-scale and residential storage systems, advanced microturbines, fuel cells, and CHP systems.

He has authored several papers on advanced storage technologies. Mr. Fioravanti was a founding Board Member of New York BEST (Battery and Energy Storage Technology Consortium), and served on their Board for five years. He received his M.B.A in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California.

Nick Frank is a manager at Li-ion Tamer and is one of the inventors of Li-ion Tamer’s off-gas monitoring system. He leverages his expertise in sensors and lithium-ion battery failure modes to create unique and valuable products for customers.

Jay Goldin is the Vice President of Green Tech Solutions for Munich Re America. In this role, he works with energy system manufacturers, developers and financiers to support solar, wind, energy storage and bioenergy project development. Prior to Munich Re, Jay led business development at Enphase Energy and received his MBA and AB from Stanford University.

Dr. Imre Gyuk is Director, Energy Storage Research, Office of Electricity, for the U.S. Department of Energy.

After taking a B.S. from Fordham University, Dr. Gyuk did graduate work at Brown University on Superconductivity. Having received a Ph.D. in Theoretical Particle Physics from Purdue University he became a Research Associate at Syracuse. As an Assistant Professor he taught Physics, Civil Engineering, and Environmental Architecture at the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Gyuk became an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics at Kuwait University where he became interested in issues of sustainability. Dr. Gyuk joined the Department of Energy to manage the Thermal and Physical Storage program. For the past two decades he has directed the Electrical Energy Storage research program in the Office of Electricity, developing a wide portfolio of storage technologies for a broad spectrum of applications. He supervised the $185M ARRA stimulus funding for Grid Scale Energy Storage Demonstrations and is now partnering with the States on numerous storage projects for grid resilience. His work has led to 12 R&D 100 awards, two EPA Green Chemistry Challenge Award, and Lifetime Achievement Awards from ESA and NAATBatt. He is internationally recognized as a leader in the energy storage field.

Scott Gibson is a Principal Engineer with Snohomish County PUD and a 1987 graduate from the University of Wyoming where he received a BSEE. After graduation, Scott worked for Boeing and then with a consulting company designing building electrical systems. In 2000, Scott joined the PUD and is now working on new electrical generation projects. Scott worked on the development of a tidal generation project, and helped to design and construct two “run of the river” hydroelectric projects. He is now the project manager for the PUD’s latest energy storage project - The Arlington Microgrid.

E. Paul Hayes, FPE, is the General Manager at American Fire Technologies. Graduate of NC State, with a BS in Civil Engineering; Professional Engineer in Civil and Fire Protection in over 35 States; Principal engineer with 30+ years’ experience managing a special hazard asset protection fire company for the industrial and power markets.

Professional functions include: Focused interest in leading edge design & development of detection and suppression systems for lithium-ion battery facilities; Member of EPRI Safety Council, SME FDNY, UL 9540A STP, Board of Directors FSSA and EEI; Technical support, oversight, design, installation of fire detection and suppression systems; NFPA code committee and code development experience; Knowledge of federal, state and local laws and regulations, and experience in regulatory agency negotiations.

Howard Hopper is a fire protection engineer who has worked for UL LLC for over 30 years. He serves on the Board of the IAFC Fire and Life Safety Section and has been an active participant in several energy storage system initiatives, including Chairing the Fire Code Action Committee energy storage system working group that developed the 2018 and 2021 IFC and IRC ESS requirements. He also is a member of the NFPA 855 Technical Committee. He has also provided over 50 education sessions to code officials and industry members on ESS fire safety.

Carl Imhoff manages the Electric Infrastructure research program at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. In this role he is responsible for PNNL's R&D programs on innovations in the areas of advanced power transmission and distribution reliability concepts, demand response, integration concepts for distributed energy resources, all scales of clean energy supply, physical and cyber security of electric systems, policy and strategy for smart grid concepts, and cross-cutting grid analytic tools in visualization and high performance computing.

During his ~30 years at PNNL, Mr. Imhoff's technical work emphasizes systems engineering and operations in the areas of power system reliability, smart grid, energy efficiency, energy storage and clean power generation. He has been involved in a number of electric power system organizations such as the North American Synchrophasor Initiative, GridWise Alliance, the Consortium for Electric Reliability Technology Solutions, and the Western Electric Coordinating Council.

Kiran Kumar is a Software Systems Manager at NEC Energy Solutions and he has 24+ years of experience in diverse domains - Energy storage, Direct Drive Wind turbine & Power conversion and Automotive Engine controls. His expertise is in a smart distributed real-time platform design, closed-loop controls, systems engineering, design of mission-critical real-time software, fault analysis, and cloud-based data analytics. At NEC Energy solution, Mr. Kiran manages systems software engineering efforts to conceive algorithms to ensure system safety, optimize the energy storage operations to maximize capacity, and lead the design of analytics algorithms to predict the storage subsystem anomalies and reduce the maintenance cost. Mr.Kiran has successfully lead the IEC61508 safety certification of NEC’s BMS software

Jim McDowall has worked in the battery industry since 1977 and is currently in the position of Senior Technical Advisor with Saft, primarily associated with grid systems. Involved in the energy storage market since 1998, Jim was a Director of the Energy Storage Association for 14 years and is a past Chair of the organization. Jim is an IEEE Fellow and is Standards Coordinator and Past Chair of the IEEE Energy Storage and Stationary Battery Committee, and Chair of three of its working groups. Jim is a frequent speaker at energy storage conferences and related events.

Erin Minear is a Technical Leader for the Energy Storage Program at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), managing projects related to integrating energy storage assets into the utility grid. Erin has previous experience in developing commercial behind-the-meter and utility distribution-connected energy storage systems for an engineering, procurement, construction (EPC) firm. She also has experience as a power systems engineer implementing reliability, energy efficiency, and renewable energy projects. Erin is a registered Professional Engineer in the state of California and has a BS and MS in Electrical Engineering from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.

Brian is a Fire Protection Engineer at the National Fire Protection Association and Vice President for the New England Chapter of the Society of Fire Protection Engineers. Brian is a professional engineer registered in the states of Texas and Massachusetts. He earned his Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering and is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Fire Protection Engineering from the University of Maryland. At the NFPA he is the staff liaison to several technical committees covering topics such as aviation, portable extinguishers, water based fire protection, energy storage systems and health care facilities.

Aron Patrick is the Manager of Technology Research and Analysis for LG&E and KU working with Kentucky’s largest solar and largest battery site. Before joining LG&E and KU, Patrick held leadership roles at the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet, including Assistant Director and Program Manager for Renewable Energy. Prior to that, Aron was an intelligence analyst for the federal government, using statistical analysis and modeling to address national security problems.

Matthew Paiss serves as a Technical Advisor in the Battery Materials & Systems group at PNNL. Prior to joining PNNL, he was the President of Energy Response Solutions, Inc (a Training & Consultation). He brings 28 yrs of emergency response experience retiring as a Fire Captain with the San Jose CA Fire Department. His background in renewable energy started in 1982 at ARCO Solar in Camarillo, CA before studying Solar Technology and Fire Science in Santa Cruz, CA and worked in the semiconductor industry as a service engineer prior to transitioning to the fire service. He has 10 years’ experience on RE Codes & Standards committees including NFPA 70 (NEC) and NFPA 855 Energy Storage Systems, and UL Standards Technical Panels 9540 and 1974. He served as a subject matter expert for the National Fire Protection Association on energy storage and has contributed to the model fire code sections on PV & ESS. Mr. Paiss has delivered electrical safety training to over 8000 firefighters nationwide. He holds certificates as Registered CA State Fire Instructor, and Certified State Fire Officer. He has written for Fire Engineering, Home Power, SolarPro and SFPE magazines.

Charles Picard is a Sr. Engineer – Energy Products at Tesla, Inc. In his current role he is responsible for ensuring that the effective and rational regulation of renewable energy products continues to help drive safety and reliability of the PV and Energy Storage industries, in addition to acting as an educational resource to building, electrical and fire code enforcement officials.

His team is also tasked with vetting new Tesla energy products, materials and methods for compliance with applicable codes and standards.

Yuliya Preger is a Senior Member of Technical Staff in the Energy Storage Technology and Systems Group at Sandia National Labs. Her current work is centered on the safety and reliability of lithium ion batteries for grid-level energy storage applications. This work ranges from cell level cycling and thermal characterization to development of new power electronics architectures factoring in battery safety. She earned her PhD and BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and MIT, respectively.

Bobby Ruiz has held the position of Fire Chief of the Peoria Fire-Medical Department for the last 7 years. He spent 37 years serving the City of Phoenix Fire Department. Positions held included Firefighter, Paramedic, Engineer, Fire Captain, Battalion Chief, Division Chief of Fire Prevention and Arson Investigations, Deputy Chief of several divisions, and finally Assistant Fire Chief of several divisions. Chief Ruiz was the Task Force Leader for the FEMA Arizona Task Force One. He lead Urban Search and Rescue teams through most disasters including, the Oklahoma Murrah Federal building and the 9/11 Trade Center. Retired from Phoenix Fire in 2011.

Chief Ruiz holds a master’s degree in Leadership Education from Northern Arizona University. He is an Associate Professor of Fire Science and Emergency Management Programs at Arizona State University for 17 years and past Mesa Community College instructor for Emergency Medical Technology.

Chris Searles has worked in the DC power systems and stationary battery industry for over 35 years. He is the immediate past chair of the IEEE Energy Storage and Stationary Battery Committee where he has served in several leadership roles for 15 years. In addition, he chairs the IEEE PES Energy Storage Collaboration Team which works to synchronize efforts between the several IEEE Societies and Committees as well as external groups engaged in the development of energy storage standards. He was inducted into the BATTCON Hall of Fame in 2018.

Chris serves as a liaison consultant for Sandia Laboratories, the IEEE Safety Codes Working Groups and the safety codes organizations to confront and communicate the impact of safety codes that affect energy storage.

He also works as a development team leader for energy storage projects at BAE Batteries USA which supplies advanced lead-acid batteries for both standby power and energy storage applications.

Mike Simpson, Sr. Technical Leader at EPRI, leads projects in the Energy Storage and Distributed Generation program. Mike applies a multi-disciplinary background in energy R&D to produce studies that bolster the feasibility of energy storage integration for a more sustainable, more robust, and cost-effective utility grid. Prior to EPRI, he worked in renewable energy and energy efficiency with AES Distributed Energy, NREL, and Rocky Mountain Institute. He has a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Colorado and an M.S. in System Design and Optimization from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Dr. Loraine Torres-Castro is a senior member of the Power Sources Research and Development organization within Sandia National Laboratories. She joined Sandia in 2016 where her work has focused on the safety and reliability of batteries, particularly under abusive conditions at the Battery Abuse Testing Laboratory (BATLab). The BATLab is committed to serving the energy storage community and the national interest with cutting-edge research programs, the highest quality testing results, and leadership in battery safety and reliability. This is achieved by understanding the mechanisms that lead to energy storage systems safety incidents; detailed failure analysis; and developing strategies to mitigate energy storage cell and system failures. Loraine earned his BS in Physics in 2010 and Ph.D. in Chemical Physics in 2016 both at the University of Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras. Her dissertation work focused on the development of cathode materials for high energy lithium-ion batteries.

Charlie Vartanian is a Sr. Technical Advisor at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory where he focuses on the integration of energy storage with power systems. Charlie has over 25 years of power industry experience deploying advanced grid technologies, performing electric system studies, and contributing to technical standards development. He has worked previously for Mitsubishi Electric, DNV KEMA, A123 Systems, Enron, the California Energy Commission, Southern California Edison, and the U.S. Navy. During his 15 years at Southern California Edison, Charlie’s activities spanned traditional T&D planning through grid R&D. He is a currently Secretary of the IEEE 1547.9 Energy Storage Interconnection working group, and Co-Chair of the IEEE Energy Storage Collaboration Team. Charlie received his BSEE from Cal Poly Pomona, and his MSEE from USC. Charlie is a licensed professional Electrical Engineer.

Vilayanur Viswanathan is a Senior Engineer at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He received his BS in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and Ph.D. from Rutgers University in Chemical and Electrochemical Engineering. His research focus areas are cost performance modeling of large scale battery systems, battery state of health modeling, gridscale battery testing and analysis, battery module reliability testing and analysis, and development of energy storage test protocols/standard for grid scale energy storage. He is the Chair for the US Technical Advisory Group to IEC TC120 to develop standards for electrical energy storage systems, and is Chair of an IEEE Flow Batteries Standards Development effort.

Dr. Hsin Wang is a distinguished R&D staff member at the Material Science and Technology Division at ORNL. He has been working at ORNL since 1995. His expertise is in the areas of thermal and electronic transport properties and thermal imaging. He has been working on Li-ion battery safety and thermal runaway testing since 1999. He is currently working on an OE project in collaboration with Sandia to develop a thermal runaway risk database.

Nick Warner’s professional career has focused primarily on safety topics related to battery storage integration and fire safety as well as failure analysis of energy storage systems. He has applied his experience in battery testing to supporting battery degradation and performance validation, failure analysis and the evaluation of materials and sensors for passive and active safety applications. These hands-on skills have also been applied to the validation of state-of-the-art technologies for deployment in grid storage applications. Nick also works on due diligence and bankability studies, including hardware and safety reviews, and performs field inspections on ES systems. Nick has become heavily involved in standards activities as well including all UL standards related to ESS as well as NFPA and ICC codes for fire safety and ESS deployment. Before leaving DNV GL, Nick led the development of the industry’s first third-party controls and battery management system (BMS) validation testing service as well as streamlining DNV GL’s explosion modeling efforts for permitting of ESS. Nick holds a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering from The Ohio State University.