Our Organization & Leadership
Our Leadership
John P. Nelson
ISVx President
John P. Nelson (Life Fellow) received a BSEE from the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, in 1970 and an MSEE from the University of Colorado Boulder in 1975. He performed post graduate studies in business administration. John has spent over fifty years as an electric power engineer and held positions with Public Service Company of Colorado from 1969-1979, Power Line Models from 1979-1984 and NEI Electric Power Engineering from 1984-Present. He was a co-founder of Power Line Models and the founder of NEI Electric Power Engineering. Mr. Nelson has been active in IEEE starting as the Student Activities Chair for the Denver Section. He later was the Denver Section Chair. Mr. Nelson has been active in the IAS Petroleum and Chemical Industry Committee (PCIC) since 1980 where he served as secretary, vice chair, chair from 2006-2012. He has received the Denver Post Honor award to service in the Colorado National Guard, the ISA/PES Denver Section Outstanding Engineer Award, the IEEE 2012 Harold Kaufman Award, the IAS/PCIC Russel W. Mills Award, the IAS Outstanding Service Award and the IAS/PCIC Safety Excellence Award.
Dr. Robin Podmore
Co-Founder and Senior Vice President: ISV Management Committee
Dr. Robin Podmore is co-founder and co-chair of IEEE Smart Village, as well as chair of the ISV Development Committee. He is also founder and President of Incremental Systems Corp. (IncSys), a private company that helps organizations train system operators to ensure reliability of the bulk power system. Robin is passionately dedicated to using his own expertise and inspiring others, including industry partners to help energy-impoverished communities build toward sustainable prosperity. In the markets that IEEE Smart Village serves, he actively promotes IEEE Smart Village’s open-source products and encourages industry to participate in consensus development of technology-interoperability standards needed for market acceptance and investor confidence in ISV’s community entrepreneurs.
Dr. Rajan Kapur
Senior Vice President: ISV Management Committee
Dr. Rajan Kapur started his career at Bell Labs. Since 1985 he has worked exclusively with start-ups, first on mixed signal micro-chip development in the Silicon Valley, and on liquid crystal on silicon micro-display systems in Colorado. In 2006, he transitioned to renewable energy and founded and sold a microinverter company. Now he runs a sustainability incubator in his garage, working with small dispersed teams on early stage projects, with participants from academia and the private sector. His current projects include air-conditioning with thermal storage, electric transportation in hill states in India, and working with IEEE Smart Village partners in Africa, the Americas and South Asia. He holds Electrical Engineering degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur; Rice University, Houston and the University of Texas at Austin.
Dr. Alan Mickelson
Vice President: ISV Operations Committee
Dr. Alan Mickelson is chair of the ISV Operations Committee. He has been on the faculty of at the University of Colorado at Boulder for going on 35 years after a one year postdoc in Soviet Armenia and 4 years on staff of the Electronics Laboratory of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Alan’s primary research field has been optical and microwave technologies for communication. Alan has also implemented wireless communication for sparsely populated remote areas in Nepal, Peru, Rwanda and Bolivia and solar energy training in Haiti. Alan received a BSEE from the University of Texas at El Paso and MS and PhD from California Institute of Technology.
Dr. Edward Rezek
Vice President: ISV Finance Committee
Dr. Edward Rezek is chair of the ISV Finance Committee, and is retired from being an Operations Manager at Northrop Grumman Space Technology (formerly TRW Space & Electronics Group), an entity specializing in electronics development for US Government and commercial applications. His work experience has ranged from basic research and development to manufacturing and has covered the spectrum from advanced technology development for US Government space applications to manufacturing low cost components for commercial applications. He has received 19 patents and has greater than 50 publications in refereed journals. He is the 1993 recipient of the TRW Chairman’s Award for Innovation and the 2006 recipient of the Northrop Grumman Distinguished Innovator Award. Edward received a BS degree in Electrical Engineering and an AB degree in Physics from Washington University in St. Louis, MO in 1976. He received his MS and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL in 1977 and 1980. He is an IEEE Fellow.
Dr. M. David Kankam
Vice President: Project Development Committee
Dr. M. David Kankam is chair of the ISV Project Development committee. Dave serves as the University Affairs Officer (UAO) at NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) in Cleveland, OH. He oversees the Center’s portfolio of NASA Higher Education opportunities for GRC-Academia partnerships and collaborations. Prior to his current position, Dave was a Senior Research Engineer at GRC for over ten years where he focused on power electronics-based systems for aerospace and terrestrial applications. He is a member of the Industry Advisory Committee for Cleveland State University’s Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering where he periodically teaches part-time. Dave is an active member of IEEE/IAS’s Industry Applications Control Committee (IACC) for which he has served in various Executive positions for over ten years. He is a Fellow of the IEEE. He holds a Bachelor and Master of Applied Science and Engineering degrees, as well as, Ph.D. all in Electrical Engineering, and a diploma in Business Administration from Canada’s University of Toronto (U of T).
Ray Larsen
Co-Founder & Vice-President: Advisory & History Committee
Ray Larsen is co-founder and chair of IEEE Smart Village, which combines the talents of IEEE members with community-owned business partners in energy-impoverished regions to create self-sustaining, micro-utilities and education programs. As chair of the organization’s Executive committee, Ray is responsible for leading IEEE Smart Village’s total operation including nurturing ten new partnerships each year, each of which pledges to grow to serve a million people. Ray is past head of the Electronics Department at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University, Past President of the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society, an IEEE Life Fellow and currently a part-time Special Projects engineering manager at the SLAC in Menlo Park, California
