Energy in Communication, Information, and Cyber-physical Systems (E6)

Bio of Rahul Tongia :

Dr. Rahul Tongia is a scholar and researcher in areas of technology and policy and is currently Adj. Professor, Carnegie Mellon University, and was recently Principal Research Scientist, CSTEP (Center for Study of Science, Technology, and Policy (CSTEP), a Bangalore-based not-for-profit research center). He is Technical Advisor, India Smart Grid Task Force, and led CSTEP efforts as Advisor & Knowledge Partner, India Smart Grid Forum. His areas of research are broad and interdisciplinary, spanning technology and policy, with domain expertise in energy/power and IT/telecom.

He has been a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University for a dozen years with appointments in the Dept. of Engineering & Public Policy and the School of Computer Science (on leave). In addition to extensive work in the ICT domain, including ICT for human development, and the digital divide (having been Vice-Chair of the UN ICT Task Force Working Group on Low-Cost Connectivity Access), his energy work has spanned seminal studies on India's nuclear power program, importing natural gas, and on power pricing, and his current area of focus is on Smart Grids, harnessing ICT to improve the power grid. He was on the Technology Advisory Board for Southern California Edison's (a leading US utility's) project on advanced metering ("Smart Connect"), and was Vice-Chair of the UN ICT Task Force Working Group on Enabling Environment (formerly Low-cost Connectivity Access). At CSTEP, he has worked on a major report on IT for the Power Sector for the Min. of Power (2008), and has been advising state power utilities, the state government, and the Ministry of Power on IT roadmaps and smart grid deployments. He and his colleagues have also worked on a number of Smart Grid roadmaps and pilot projects in India. Dr. Tongia has a Ph.D. in Engineering & Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University and a Sc.B. in Electrical Engineering from Brown University.

Bio of Costas Courcoubetis

Prof. Costas A Courcoubetis is heading the Network Economics and Services Group and the Theory, Economics and Systems Lab at the Athens University of Economics and Business. He was born in Athens, Greece and received his Diploma (1977) from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, his MS (1980) and PhD (1982) from the University of California, Berkeley, in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Since autumn 1999 he is a Professor in the Department of Informatics at the Athens University of Economics and Business. His current research interests are economics of networks with emphasis in the development of pricing schemes that reduce congestion and enhance stability and robustness, quality of service and management of integrated services, performance and traffic analysis of large systems, applied probability models.

He has published over 100 papers in scientific journals such as Operations Research, Mathematics of Operations Research, Journal on Applied Probability, IEEE Transactions in Communications, IEEE JSAC, SIAM Journal on Computing etc. and in conferences such as FOCS, STOC, LICS, INFOCOM. GLOBCOM, ITC, ACM SIGMETRICS. His work has over 9000 citations according to the Publish or Perish citation analysis software program. He is co-author with Richard Weber of "Pricing Communication Networks: Economics, Technology and Modeling" (Wiley, 2003).

Bio of Reji Kumar Pillai

Reji is a renowned expert in the electric power sector with 30+ years of international experience in the electricity industry in diverse functions across the entire value chain. He has been a key member of many multidisciplinary teams that were engaged in reform and restructuring of power and water utilities in Asia, Middle East, and Africa.

In Oct 2011, Reji was unanimously elected as the President of India Smart Grid Forum, a public - private partnership initiative of the Govt of India for accelerated development of smart grid technologies in the Indian power sector for a 2 year term.As an entrepreneur Reji has built successful enterprises in India and UAE and exited them. Presently he is the Founder and Managing Director with Magnetar Venture, a 100 million USD India focused Fund to foster innovation in clean technologies with a mission to build globally successful enterprises out of India in the emerging Clentech revolution. He is also an active member of Indian Angel Network.

Reji has advanced education in Engineering, Finance, Management and Law; and has worked with NTPC and IBM and been a senior consultant with ADB, World Bank and USAID. A recognized thought leader in Smart Grid technologies, Reji is a popular key-note speaker at international symposiums and conferences on Smart Grids and Cleantech. He has also contributed to several articles and books.