USNC Names Participants for 2011 IEC Young Professionals Workshop

Held in conjunction with the 75th IEC General Meeting in Melbourne, Australia, on October 24-28, 2011, the workshop will bring together professionals from around the world who are at the start of their careers in electrotechnical standardization and conformance.

The program seeks to cultivate long-term national involvement in the international arena, strengthen the future of technology transfer, and encourage the participation of young professionals in shaping standardization and conformance for tomorrow.

The USNC received a number of applications for very well qualified candidates, making the selection committee's job difficult. The winners are:

• Sourjo Basu
  Mr. Basu joined GE over a year ago and has been very active in the GE Smart Meters division - an integral part of GE Energy's Smart Grid focus. As a student at Georgia Tech, he became involved in standards activities and led the Georgia Tech IEEE branch as treasurer and later as Chair from 2004 to 2006. He has been instrumental in advising on meter design and has helped to keep an eye on emerging standards for electric vehicle chargers. He is a member of the IEEE Power and Energy Society, serving on the committees of the Power System Communications Committee, the Intelligent Grid Coordinating Committee, and the Steering Committee on Electric Vehicles. He also recently became a member of IEC 61850-7-420.

• Jonathan Colby
  Mr. Colby is a highly regarded subject matter expert in marine hydrokinetic energy. His technical leadership is recognized and respected by his fellow members of the U.S. Technical Advisory Group (TAG) to IEC Technical Committee (TC) 114, Marine energy. His product developments for marine renewable energy are considered noteworthy milestones in the acceleration of this technology. Mr. Colby served as chair for the U.S. Shadow Committee for PT62600-200, Power Performance Assessment of Electricity Producing Tidal Energy Converters.

• Stephen Elliott
  Stephen Elliott, Ph.D., is an associate professor at Purdue University and the head of its Biometric Standards Performance and Assurance (BSPA) laboratory. Since 2001, when Dr. Elliott joined the International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) M1 - Biometrics, he has been committed to educating students on the standards process and the importance and necessity of the work done by standards organizations such as the IEC, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), ANSI, and INCITS by incorporating standards development and strategy into the university's curriculum. He is a member of the ANSI Committee on Education, serves as project editor for several ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee (JTC) 1 Subcommittee (SC) 37 standards on biometrics, and serves as editor for the ISO/IEC JTC 1 Supplement to the ISO/IEC Directives.

The USNC's selectees will attend a dedicated workshop alongside recipients from other nations where they will learn more about the IEC, standardization strategies, and conformity assessment. They will also have the opportunity to attend the technical meetings where standards are developed, observe a meeting of the IEC Standardization Management Board, and benefit from extensive networking opportunities in an international setting.

"On behalf of the USNC, I'd like to particularly congratulate our three winners, and express the wish that we could have recognized all of the candidates," said Phil Piqueira, global standards leader for General Electric (GE) Industrial Solutions Business and president of the USNC. "We look forward to having these truly deserving recipients participate in the Young Professionals Workshop as part of the 75th IEC General Meeting in Melbourne this fall."