Energy Efficiency and Smart Grid

Tapping Sacramento’s High-Tech Human Capital in support of our Economic Recovery

 May 13^th at 6 pm at the Intel Folsom Campus Bldg FM-7

Panelists:

1)      Sajol Ghoshal, CTO and Chief Architect, Akros

2)    Konstantinos Papamichael, Associate Director, UC Davis’ California Lighting Technology Center

3)     Jim Parks, Director of Energy Efficiency Research and Development, SMUD

Sajol Ghoshal is CTO and Chief Architect, Akros and was previously Chief Operating Officer at Calpont Corp., a development stage company specializing in hardware database systems, where he was responsible for engineering, operations, worldwide sales, product marketing and applications support. At Calpont, he engaged with key alpha development partners such as FedEx, Acxiom, NCR/Teradata and Business Objects. Prior to Calpont, he was Vice President of Engineering of Agere Inc. in Austin, TX. Before Agere, he worked for 13 years at Level One Communications, where he served as Director of Engineering of the WAN Access Division. Mr. Ghoshal has 21 years of experience and holds an MS degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of 7 patents.

Konstantinos Papamichael is a professor and the Associate Director of the California Lighting Technology Center at the University of California, Davis. Konstantinos has 25 years of R&D experience in building energy efficiency strategies and technologies, focusing on fenestration systems, daylighting, electric lighting and associated controls.  He participates in a wide range of academic and professional activities related to building energy efficiency.  He is author/co-author of over 70 publications and has been a member of many committees addressing lighting, daylighting and energy efficiency issues.  He is currently the Chair of the IESNA Daylighting Committee.

Jim Parks is the Energy Efficiency and Customer Research and Development Manager at the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD).  He is responsible for demonstrating emerging energy efficiency technologies; promoting electric transportation technologies; and coordinating regulatory and legislative activities in the areas of transportation and energy efficiency. Prior to assuming his current position, he supervised the development of SMUD’s energy efficiency, load management and low-income programs; promoted energy efficiency in commercial new construction; and worked as an electrical engineer in the utility industry. He has a degree in electrical engineering and has over 17 years experience in the energy industry. Mr. Parks chairs the following Advisory Boards: Demonstration of Energy Efficient Developments (DEED); California Commissioning Collaborative (CCC); Consortium for Energy Efficiency (CEE); CMUA Energy Services and Marketing Committee

SARTA’s HiTEC – In support of Sacramento’s Economic Recovery

In 2006, SARTA launched a program called CleanStart. CleanStart has proven to be a great asset to Sacramento and has helped promote and support the more than 100 clean-tech companies in our region. MedStart has been another great SARTA initiative which has leveraged the great resources of our region’s hospitals, businesses and research institutions in order to create a viable and healthy medical device industry.

These two great technology initiatives inspired SARTA leaders to hold further conversations  with the intention of gathering the thousands of high-tech engineers in Sacramento to become more directly involved in the future of our high-tech based economy…….and at this time one should say, to help in our region’s Economic Recovery.

This past January, SARTA leaders along with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Intel Capital and Sacramento State’s College of Engineering and Computer Science launched SARTA’s latest technology initiative HiTEC (High Tech Engineering Connect). HiTEC has become a vehicle to leverage on the tremendous high-tech talent in the greater Sacramento region. HiTEC's mission is to help promote high technology developments in our region and to inform the community of opportunities for collaboration between engineers, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists in an effort to create and help attract high technology businesses to Sacramento.HiTEC hopes to become a clearing house of high technology resources in areas of great interest to Sacramento; currently clean/green technologies and biomedical technologies.

The first meeting of HiTEC hosted 80 high tech engineers, venture capitalists and angel investors on the campus of Sacramento State for a panel titled "Venture Capitalists in a High Tech Engineering World". Panel members included Roger Akers, Harry Laswell, and Fracois Crepin; three of Sacramento’s most successful high technology entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. The response from this meeting was tremendously positive.

HiTEC’s next meeting will be at the Intel Folsom campus on May 13 and will focus on engineering in support for energy efficiency and renewable energy, that is, Smart Grid technologies. We expect that this meeting will attract more than 200 people.