Closing Panel

Closing Panel, October 11, 1:30-2:30 pm

“The Next Big Thing, Approaches in Engineering Design, Manufacturing and Sustainable Design”

Moderator: Stephen Goodnick, Professor and Senior Sustainability Scientist, Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, Arizona State University

Panelists:

Mahesh Morjaria, VP, Systems Development, First Solar Electric
Gary Dirks, Professor and Director of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, Arizona State University
Sayfe Kiaei, Professor, Motorola Chair Professor in Analog and RFIC, Arizona State University
Todd Brady, Global Sustainability Director, Intel

Panelist Bios

Mahesh Morjaria leads an R&D team at First Solar responsible for the development of new PV system products and grid integration capability for utility-scale PV plants. Dr. Morjaria previously worked at GE for over twenty years where he held various leadership positions. He has authored numerous papers and patents in the area of renewable grid integration, PV and wind plants, wind turbine controls, monitoring, diagnostics, and services technologies. His academic credits include B.Tech from IIT Bombay and Ph.D. from Cornell University in USA.

Gary Dirks is director of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability and director of LightWorks, an Arizona State University initiative that capitalizes on ASU’s strengths in solar energy and other light-inspired research. He is also the Julie Wrigley Chair of Sustainable Practices and a professor of practice in the School of Sustainability and distinguished sustainability scientist.

Before joining ASU, Dirks was the president of BP Asia-Pacific and the president of BP China. In China, he grew BP from an operation with fewer than 30 employees and no revenue to more than 1,300 employees and revenues of about $4 billion in 2008.

Dirks has served on the boards of the India Council for Sustainable Development, the U.S. China Center for Sustainable Development, and the China Business Council for Sustainable Development.

Dirks received China’s “Friendship Award” in 2003 and received an honorary CMG (Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George) from the United Kingdom in 2005. In December 2008 he was recognized by the People’s Daily as one of the 10 most influential multinational company leaders of the last 30 years of China’s economic development.

Dirks received a Ph.D. in chemistry from ASU in 1980. He was the first doctoral student to work in the Center for the Study of Early Events in Photosynthesis (now the Center for Bioenergy and Photosynthesis).

Sayfe Kiaei, is Motorola Endowed Chair in Integrated Circuits, and Professor, School of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering in the Ira. A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, Arizona State University.

Dr. Kiaei has been with ASU since January 2001. He is a professor and Motorola Endowed professor and chair in analog and RF integrated circuits. He directs ASU’s Center on Global Energy Research and is also the director of NSF Connection One research center with a focus on integrated communication system. Kiaei was the associate dean of research at the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering from 2009 to 2012. From 1993 to 2001, he was a senior member of technical staff with the Wireless Technology Center and Broadband Operations at Motorola where he was responsible for the development of RF and transceiver integrated circuits, GPS RF IC and digital subscriber lines (DSL) transceivers. Kiaei was an associate professor at Oregon State University from 1987 to 1993. He was the co-director of the industry-university center for the Design of Analog/Digital ICs (CDADIC).

He has published over 150 journal and conference papers and holds several patents and his research interests are in wireless transceiver design, RF and Mixed-Signal IC’s in CMOS and SiGe. His research projects are funded by a large number of industrial sponsors and federal funding agencies. Dr. Kiaei is an IEEE Fellow, and has been the chair and on the technical program committee of several IEEE conferences including RFIC, MTT, ISCAS and other international conferences. He received his Ph.D., electrical and computer engineering, from Washington State University.

Todd Brady is the Global Sustainability Director for Intel Corporation. In this role, he directs Intel’s global initiatives to make Intel “smart & green” by leading corporate-wide sustainability programs such as climate, energy and water conservation, green design and the integration of internet of things (IoT) solutions to create smart and green offices, buildings and facilities of the future. Since joining Intel in 1995, Todd has led a wide range of environmental initiatives within the company, ranging from key public regulatory and policy engagements to establishing Intel’s product stewardship strategies and design for environment programs at semiconductor manufacturing sites. During his 20+ years at Intel, Todd has represented the company publicly and led industry-wide initiatives in many national and international environmental committees. He has authored more than 20 papers in scientific journals and conference proceedings on a variety of sustainability topics. In 2009, he was named by Scientific American as one of ten outstanding leaders involved in research, business or policy pursuits that have advanced science and technology. Todd holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from Brigham Young University and a MS in Environmental Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Moderator

Stephen M. Goodnick received his Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Colorado State University, Fort Collins, in 1983. He was a post-doctoral fellow in the Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI) and the physics department of the University of Modena, Italy, in 1985. He was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow in the physics departments of the Technical University of Munich, Germany, in 1986, before joining Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Oregon State University as a faculty in 1986. He served as Chair and Professor of Electrical Engineering with Arizona State University, Tempe, from 1996 to 2005. He served as Associate Vice President for Research for Arizona State University from 2006-2008, and presently serves as Deputy Director of ASU Lightworks. He is currently a Hans Fischer Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Technical University of Munich. Professionally, he is currently serving as Past-President (2012-2013) of the IEEE Nanotechnology Council. He has published over 400 journal articles, books, book chapters, and conference proceeding, and is a Fellow of IEEE (2004) for contributions to carrier transport fundamentals and semiconductor devices.