CURENT Seminar Series:  Dr. Kevin Jones, Grid Widget Labs

Date:  Friday, October 13, 2017

Time:  12:20 – 1:10pm EST

Location: Room 124 Min H. Kao Building, Knoxville, TN

Title: My Transition to Entrepreneurship: A Different Way to Perceive Work and Risk

Presenter:  Dr. Kevin Jones, Grid Widget Labs

Abstract: In January 2017, Kevin Jones started a company called Grid Widget Laboratories with the goal of using technology to promote software craftsmanship in the electric power industry. In this seminar, he will share some of the driving forces behind the direction of this initiative including what it means to be a power systems engineer in 2017, a brief segment on the company he is building, and the changes in perspective that led him to believe that entrepreneurship and other non-standard career trajectories would be inevitable. As part of this, Dr. Jones discusses how our perception of our work and the risks we take in our career evolve as we mature. He concludes with some blanket advice for the budding entrepreneur and some perspective on the entrepreneurial opportunity as a graduate student in CURENT.

Bio: Kevin Jones received his Ph.D. from Virginia Tech in 2013 as a Harry Lynde Bradley Fellow. His research and technology contributions have centered around synchrophasor data analytics. Most notably, he developed a 3-phase and a positive sequence  linear state estimator and maintains these projects in the open source domain. He has worked with vendors to adopt this technology and continues to build on it through personal contributions and DOE sponsored initiatives. Dr. Jones is currently a Consulting Engineer with Dominion Energy Virginia and also has his own company Grid Widget Laboratories that is working to promote software craftsmanship in the electric utility industry.