For More Information

[BST09] D. Bakken, R. Schantz, and R. Tucker. “Smart Grid Communications: QoS Stovepipes or QoS Interoperability?”, Grid-Interop 2009 (best “connectivity” paper), Denver, November 18, 2009.

This paper argues that, by the very stated definitions and goals of the smart grid community, middleware is needed. And even moreso if one cares about QoS.

[BBH+11] D. Bakken, A. Bose, C. Hauser, D. Whitehead, and G. Zweigle. “Smart Generation and Transmission with Coherent, Real-Time Data”. Proceedings of the IEEE (Special Issue on Smart Grids), 99(6), June 2011, 928-951. Preprint (if IEEE paper not accessible).

Note: Proceedings of the IEEE is the most prestigious journal from the largest professional organization in the world. Dr. Bakken was directly invited to submit this paper.

[Bak13] D. Bakken, “ Data Delivery Requirements, Issues, and Mechanisms for Wide Area Measurement systems (WAMS) ”, 2.5 hour (highly interactive) seminar at National Security Agency, 26 Feb 2013. Note: please do not share this presentation, or this URL (not linked from any other place) beyond DHS, NSA, DOE, and similar without prior permission.

This is a great “Reader’s Digest” overview of GridStat. It also explains why NASPInet/GridStat has to be middleware, not network-layer technology.

[BMA13] D. Bakken, D. Marr, and D. Anderson. GridStat Inc White Paper v5.

[BHG+07] David E. Bakken, Carl H. Hauser, Harald Gjermundrød, Anjan Bose. "Towards More Flexible and Robust Data Delivery for Monitoring and Control of the Electric Power Grid". Technical Report TR-GS-009, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Washington State University, May 2007.

This document has a lot of background information on why power grids need much better wide-area communications.

Bio Summaries of Key Personnel

Dr. David Bakken is the Chief Scientist of GridStat Inc. He is considered the leading expert on wide-area communications for power grids. He is a faculty member of the Computer Science department at Washington State University. For the past 14 years he has been working very closely with WSU's top-5 electric power program and been developing GridStat’s intellectual property. As part of this, each year Dr. Bakken visits many utilities, electrical engineering departments, and power meetings. He has been extremely involved in the North American Synchrophasor Initiative (NASPI), and its predecessor, for 8 years. This initiative is the most forward-looking one in the world in terms of using wide-area sensors. Active in the power grid research and development community, Dr. Bakken gave a plenary speech in 2011 in the same session as GE CEO Jeff Immelts, and was asked to give keynotes for European Commission “Power+IT” meetings in 2005 and 2009. He is also very involved with PSERC.

Before WSU, Dr. Bakken was a research scientist at BBN, the research lab that built the first internet (the ARPANET) in 1969. There he led DARPA projects on wide-area middleware involving quality of service, replication, and security. His QuO middleware has flown in Boeing experimental aircraft and been evaluated for use with UAVs. Advances in distributed real-time embedded computing (DRE) from DARPA in the 1990s and after that have not yet reached the commercial marketplace have informed and influenced what is possible with GridStat. Dr. Bakken has worked for Boeing and consulted to Amazon.com, Intel, Real-Time Innovations, and others.

Derrick Mar is the CTO of GridStat Inc. With over 25 years of experience, Derrick has held various technical leadership positions at Microsoft, IBM, Reuters as well as many other successful start-ups in the space of middleware, information security, software-as-a-service, as well as other mission critical enterprise applications. Prior to GridStat Inc, he has been responsible for Engineering, Data Center Operations, Security, and Customer Support, Derrick was the CTO of Varolii, a SaaS provider of in-the-cloud customer/employee communication. Before Varolii, Derrick was the VP of Engineering of FrontBridge Technologies, a SaaS provider of email security and filtering which was acquired by Microsoft in 2005. Prior to FrontBridge and before being acquired by McAfee, Derrick was the VP of Engineering of Entercept Security, an intrusion prevention system provider. Earlier in his career, being part of the early days of TIBCO Software, a publish-subscribe vendor, Derrick led engineering teams that developed and deployed a system that runs the NASDAQ Europe stock exchange.

Dave Anderson is the Lead Software Design Engineer of GridStat Inc. The son of power engineer, he has far more context and insight as to the operation of the power grid than most software engineers. Dave has been associated with GridStat research efforts since 2007, first as an undergraduate researcher contributing to GridStat development on the NSF TCIP cyber security project and to deployment efforts in a multi-site, VPN-based, GridStat evaluation involving PNNL and INL. In 2009 he became lead programmer of GridStat and lab infrastructure manager for the GridStat research group at WSU, a full-time position. Dave also worked on the GridSim “smartgrid in a box” project, which involved substantial integration of the WSU Distributed State Estimator application with GridStat, as well as ongoing development of GridStat, including integration with the ARPA-E GridCloud project with Cornell. Dave also has extensive experience with system administration for Mac, Windows, and Linux systems in hardware, virtualized, and cloud environments. He received his B.S. degree in Computer Science from Washington State University, Pullman, Washington, in 2009.

Nicholas Tiliacos is the CEO of GridStat Inc. He has over 30 years of technology leadership experience having led both public (NASDAQ) and private companies (early, mid & late stage). He also has extensive international general management experience, has lived overseas and is fluent in several languages.

Prior to GridStat Mr. Tiliacos served as Chief Executive Officer of Varolii Corporation a private Seattle based company with over 300 employees and $70 million in revenues. Prior to Varolii he was CEO of Mosaix a NASDAQ publicly traded company based in Redmond Washington which was ultimately sold to Lucent Technologies.

Mr. Tiliacos has received many industry awards including Call Center Magazine's Pioneer Award. Mr. Tiliacos holds a BS in Business Administration from Florida State University and a Master’s degree from the Thunderbird School of International Management in Glendale, Arizona.

John J. Flavio is the CFO of GridStat Inc GridStat’s CFO John Flavio has been a finance professional for 35 years, with over 30 years as CFO, including 15 years as CFO of public companies.

Mr. Flavio’s professional experience has included working for or with companies such as, Varolii Corporation, Google, Postini, Keynote Systems, Mosaix, Lucent, Fairchild Semiconductor and Arthur Young and Company (now Ernst and Young).

John Flavio has been actively involved in a number of civic, industry and charitable organizations as an officer and director including, Samaritan House, Entrepreneurs Foundation and The Coalition of Publicly Traded Partnerships and continues to be a member of the Financial Executives Institute and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

Previously Mr. Flavio has served on boards of Pro V International and Varolii Corporation.

John Flavio received his Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting from University of Santa Clara and has attended the Stanford Graduate School of Business summer studies program.