Judith Curry is President and co-founder of Climate Forecast Applications Network (CFAN).  Following an influential career in academic research and administration, Dr. Curry founded CFAN to translate cutting-edge weather and climate research into forecast products that support the mitigation of weather and climate risk for public and private sector decision makers. She received a PhD in atmospheric science from the University of Chicago and has held faculty positions at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Colorado Boulder, Penn State University, and Purdue University.  She currently holds the position of Professor Emerita at Georgia Tech.  Dr. Curry’s research interests span a range of topics in weather and climate. She has authored over 180 scientific papers, and is author of the textbooks Thermodynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans and Thermodynamics, Kinetics and Microphysics of Clouds.  She is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Geophysical Union. Dr. Curry is actively engaged at the intersection of science and public policy and is frequently called upon to give Congressional testimony and serve as an expert witness on matters related to weather and climate. 

Doug Houseman is the Chair of the IEEE PES Intelligent Grid and Emerging Technology Coordinating Committee. He has worked in 70 countries on energy issues. He is the lead author of the Distribution Utility Technology Roadmap published by CEATI. With more than 40 years in the industry he has watched the evolution of power generation from the 1970s where solar PV was $15 a watt to today when it can be purchased for $0.40 a watt. His blog on LinkedIn has more than 10,000 followers. Doug teaches non-battery storage, Green Hydrogen, the Distribution System, Generation economics, and more for IEEE, EUCI and other organizations. He is seldom shy.

Richard Perez leads solar energy research at University at Albany State University of New York Atmospheric Sciences Research Center. He has served multiple terms on the board of the American Solar Energy Society and as associate editor of Solar Energy Journal. He has produced over 250 journal articles, conference papers, books & chapters. He holds patents on energy storage, and load management using photovoltaics. He has received several international awards including a Certificate for Outstanding Research from the US Department of Energy, American Solar Charles Greeley Abbot Award; the First International Building and Daylight Award from the Velux Foundation, and International Solar Society’s Farrington Daniels Award, for outstanding contributions in science, technology and engineering of solar energy applications which lead to enhancing our world and the conditions of human kind.

Gert Rietveld has a PhD in applied physics and is chief scientist in the electricity and time department of VSL, the national measurement institute of the Netherlands. He has been active for more than 25 years in the area of electrical metrology, where his present work focuses on precision measurements for power and energy, and particularly metrology for smart electricity grids. In addition, he holds the chair on “Power and Energy Measurement Systems” at the University of Twente where he works on precision measurements on batteries, of efficiency, and in electricity grids.

Geoff Wright is the Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at Brookfield Renewable, responsible for the global group’s commercial partnerships around utility-scale renewable, distributed generation and innovations business. Geoff is an economist and a systems thinker. Having spent 10 years at the Canadian central bank and 10 years in both conventional and renewable energy, Geoff has a deep appreciation for the technical and institutional conditions necessary to enable the profound transitions currently underway in our energy systems. Geoff is based in Gatineau, Québec and sits on the Board of QUEST, a national non-government organization that works to accelerate the adoption of efficient and integrated community-scale energy systems in Canada by informing, inspiring, and connecting decision-makers. Geoff also sits on the Board of the Friends of Iceland (Ottawa), a not-for-profit organization that promotes cultural exchanges between the “western cousins” and the families and friends that remain in Iceland.