Using analytics to support a utility’s initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic amid an uncertain evidence base

Author's Biography

Jeff Schlegelmilch is the Deputy Director for the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at the Earth Institute, Columbia University. He oversees projects related to the practice of disaster preparedness and guides the development of strategic planning for the centre. His areas of expertise include public health policy and preparedness, community resilience and public-private partnerships.

Aleksi Paaso is Director of Distribution Planning, Smart Grid & Innovation at Commonwealth Edison, the electric utility serving Northern Illinois, including the city of Chicago. He is responsible for distribution planning activities, distributed energy resource interconnection, as well as Smart Grid strategy and project execution. He is a senior member of the IEEE and Technical Co-Chair for the 2020 IEEE PES Transmission & Distribution Conference and Exposition. He holds a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Kentucky.

Jackie Ratner is a senior project manager at the National Center for Disaster Preparedness. Her advocacy for public access to disaster-specific knowledge has been recognised in awards for science outreach, and she has spoken at the annual conferences of the American Geophysical Union and the European Geophysical Union, as well as numerous smaller conferences. Her BS with honours in geology was awarded by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and she was accepted to the earth science doctoral programme at the University of Oxford.

Gunjan Saxena is a research staff assistant at the National Center for Disaster Preparedness. She provides research and analytic support into decision-making factors resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Gunjan is also an advanced analytics manager at Ernst & Young, LLP leveraging artificial intelligence and machine-learning capabilities in financial services. She holds a BA in math / actuarial science from the University of Connecticut.

Zackery White is a research staff assistant at the National Center for Disaster Preparedness, focusing on decision support tool development during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as supporting projects focused on the persistent, long-term needs of those affected by disasters. Zack received his MPH from Columbia University and holds a BS in biomedical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He is currently a PhD student in disaster science and management at the University of Delaware Biden School of Public Policy & Administration, with a focus on family and childhood disaster preparedness.

Susanna Aguilar is a senior analyst in Smart Grid programs at Commonwealth Edison, where she works on developing methodologies to evaluate the qualitative and quantitative impacts of investments in grid resilience. Susanna holds a PhD in management science and an undergraduate degree in architecture from Illinois Institute of Technology, where she previously worked as a postdoctoral researcher and adjunct faculty member.

Daniel Kushner is Manager of Smart Grid Programs at Commonwealth Edison. He leads development and strategic planning for grid-of-the-future initiatives, including external communication and content development on emerging technologies, energy storage, microgrids and smart city deployments. Daniel has produced industry trend reports ranging from smart cities to smart grids for such publications as IEEE Smart City, T&D World and Asian Survey. He holds a BA degree in history from Johns Hopkins University and a PhD in political science from Brown University.

Norayr Matevosyan manages the Grid Data Science team at Commonwealth Edison. His research interests include the development of outage prediction models for grid assets. He has a PhD in mathematics in 2003 from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. He has also worked as research scientist and lectured at RICAM; University of Vienna, University of Cambridge and University of Texas at Austin.

Jaime Ortega is Director of Grid Analytics at Commonwealth Edison, where he directs the activities of the grid analytics and regulatory reporting and reliability analysis teams. He previously worked at PECO, where he developed and implemented strategies to improve operational performance and maintain strong regulatory relationships.

Shay Bahramirad is Vice President of Engineering and Smart Grid at Commonwealth Edison, where she drives efforts to visualise and implement the 21st-century power grid transformation and the new energy economy. She holds executive responsibility for the company’s vision of the grid of the future, developing frameworks for enabling resilience, sustainability and energy equity. Dr Bahramirad holds multiple advanced degrees, including a PhD in electrical engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology; she is also a graduate of Northwestern University’s Women’s Senior Leadership programme.