NIST CPS Leadership Team and Presidential Innovation Fellows
Dr. S. Shyam Sunder, Director, Engineering Laboratory of the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) has made the following announcement rearding the new leadership team for the NIST Smart Grid and Cyber-Physical Systems Program Office and the three new Presidential Innovation Fellows who are joining NIST (two for CPS and one for Smart Grid, a key CPS sector):
“I have selected Chris Greer to be the Director of the Smart Grid and Cyber-Physical Systems Program Office pending approval by the Department of Commerce and the Office of Personnel Management. Chris will concurrently hold the title of National Coordinator for Smart Grid Interoperability. Chris and I have also decided to reassign Dave Wollman to be the Deputy Director. This team will build on the outstanding work conducted under the leadership of George Arnold, who recently moved to the position of Director of the Standards Coordination Office. Chris and Dave will work with industry and government partners to lead the development of a comprehensive effort in cyber-physical systems. Their goal is to promote the measurement science and standards required to create a new generation of interoperable, dynamic, and efficient “smart systems” through the convergence of networking, information, and communication technologies with distributed sensing, control, data analytics, and predictive tools.
The three new PIFs—Geoff Mulligan, Sokwoo Rhee, and John Teeter—were selected from a highly competitive pool of applicants. We were fortunate to be able to attract top notch candidates for these prestigious one-year term appointments. These exceptional individuals will move our CPS/Smart Grid agenda forward over the next year working in partnership SSG agencies and industry. The PIF program pairs top innovators from the private sector, non-profits, and academia with top innovators in government to work on challenges whose solutions could provide immediate benefits and cost-savings to American citizens, entrepreneurs and businesses. The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) runs the PIF program, now in its second year of existence, selected the new research areas to expand the PIF program for this year based on proposals submitted by agencies across the government.”
Bios of the Leadership Team:
Chris Greer (Director, Smart Grid and Cyber-Physical Systems Program Office) brings with him extensive leadership experience from academia, the NSF, the White House, and NIST. Chris previously served as Associate Director for Programs in the NIST Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) and Acting Senior Advisor for Cloud Computing. In these positions, he was responsible for strategic planning for information technology initiatives across ITL, including its data and cloud computing efforts. Prior to joining NIST, Chris served as Assistant Director for Information Technology R&D in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and Cybersecurity Liaison to the National Security Staff. His responsibilities there included networking and information technology research and development, cybersecurity, and digital scientific data access. He has also served as Director of the National Coordination Office for the Federal Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Program. This program coordinates IT R&D investments across the Federal government, including the cyber-physical systems research portfolio. Prior to undertaking government service, Chris was a member of the tenured faculty at the University of California, Irvine, where his research focused on gene expression. He holds a Ph.D. degree in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley and a BA degree from the University of California, San Diego.
Dave Wollman (Deputy Director, Smart Grid and Cyber-Physical Systems Program Office) brings with him extensive experience at NIST, and most recently as Manager of the Smart Grid Standards and Research in the Engineering Laboratory. Before joining the Smart Grid and Cyber-Physical Systems Program Office, he managed efforts within the NIST Physical Measurement Laboratory to maintain and advance the Nation’s electrical standards and metrology supporting the electric power industry. In addition, he has served in several other positions at NIST, including Scientific Advisor for the former Electronics and Electrical Engineering Laboratory, Program Analyst in NIST Director's Program Office, and bench-level scientist in Boulder, Colorado developing advanced high-resolution x-ray detectors. He holds a Ph.D. degree in condensed matter physics and a MS degree in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a BS degree in Physics from Michigan State University.
Geoff Mulligan (Presidential Innovation Fellow, CPS) has been instrumental in the development of Internet including early IPv4 deployments - bringing the first Pentagon system up on the Arpanet supporting OSD, SAF and JCS - and helped design and develop IPv6 - writing the first PC and first embedded implementations. He helped design and develop the Air Force Academy's FalconNET where he also taught programming and networking classes. Geoff was one of the first people to envision IP based M2M networks and an all IP IoT. He created the 6lowpan protocol, chaired the IETF working group and was a founder of the Zigbee Alliance. He holds over 15 patents in Computer Security, Networking and electronic mail, wrote a book on SPAM and was called to testify before Congress on electronic commerce and computer security. He received his B.S in Computer Science from the Air Force Academy and his M.S in Computer Science from the University of Denver. Colloquially some have called Geoff the "Father of the Embedded Internet". Geoff will be expected to help lead/build a multidisciplinary team of technical experts from the private and public sector and reach consensus in developing a framework consisting of a high-level reference architecture, standards, and protocols for CPS.
Sokwoo Rhee (Presidential Innovation Fellow, CPS) is a proactive entrepreneur and executive with expertise in various technical fields including wireless networks/medical devices/energy management/sensors/robotics in commercial, industrial and military applications. He is one of the pioneers who have initiated and grown the cyber-physical systems and "Internet of Things" industry from early 2000's. He has raised multiple rounds of venture financing and guided the company to become a leader in the industry, which was eventually acquired by a world-leading factory automation company. His work and achievements have been recognized by multiple prestigious awards including MIT Technology Review’s Top Innovators under 35 (TR35). He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical/Biomedical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Seoul National University. Sokwoo will be expected to help lead/build a multidisciplinary team of private and public sector technical experts in developing a framework of real-time analysis tools, testbeds and reference implementations for CPS.
John Teeter (Presidential Innovation Fellow, Green Button) has a 40 year history in the electrical and technology industries, including most recently as Chief Scientist for People Power, a software company enabling remote control and management of connected devices from mobile devises. Previously, he has engaged in consultations with Masdar, IBM, and CH2M-Hill in the areas of infrastructure systems. John was the founder and CEO of First Step Research, a boutique research consultancy which focused on the evolution of technology. First Step provided community internet services in the early nineties and stimulated the growth of early social networks supporting both local and globally based communities of interest. Prior to First Step Research, John was a founder and VP of Engineering at Gold Hill Computers, bringing the tools and technologies of artificial intelligence research to the commercial marketplace. His early engineering experience with Hewlett-Packard and Honeywell Information Systems focused on international standards in the areas of distributed information systems. John has a M.S. in electrical engineering/computer science from the University of Idaho, and a B.S. in Mathematics and Secondary Education from Idaho State University. John will be expected to help lead/enhance Green Button data consistency through testing, certification and other mechanisms based on feedback from consumer, vendor, and utility implementations and lessons learned.