2023 Power Grid
Digitalization Forum

Connecting organizations to solve tomorrow’s challenges 

Hotel Omni Mont-Royal ~ Montreal

Click here to book your room

UTC Power Grid Digitization Forum is designed to bring together Utility CEOs, CIOs, CTOs, and other senior utility ICT executives for an in-depth two-day forum focused on optimized operations and managing overall organizational network cost. This forum will offer high-level discussions around our industry challenges allowing attendees to work together on strategic initiatives to gain successful solutions. This unique forum will offer a highly interactive, intimate format for C- Level utility executives seeking the latest Industry regulatory news, standards, and cutting-edge technology.

SPEAKERS

Olukayode Adegboyega
Olukayode Adegboyega
ICS Cyber Security Lead - Atkins Réalis

Kayode Adegboyega has over 15 years of experience in Information Security providing consultative engagements to clients in both private and public sectors. His experience covers areas of Cyber Security such as design, integration, testing, risk assessment, threat and vulnerability assessment, and project management. Most recently, he worked as a Cyber Security consultant managing clients’ expectations on Cybersecurity Governance Strategy, Threat Intelligence, Threat Risk Assessment, (TRA) and managing security technologies such as Next Generation Firewalls, Email Security, Endpoint Protection, Network Access Control, Intrusion Detection/Prevention System, and Internet Gateway.

At SNC-Lavalin, Kayode is a Cyber Security Lead providing consultancy on Cyber Security for Operation Technology (OT) and Information Technology (IT) in alignment with recognized industry standards and frameworks such as NIST, IEC 62443, ISO27000 series, NERC CIP and PMI.
Ali Ahmadi
Ali Ahmadi
ICS Cyber Security consultant, Atkins Réalis

Ali is an ICS Cyber Security consultant with SNC-Lavalin currently working as a lead consultant on a critical infrastructure project for the transportation industry. In 2022, he began working for SNC-Lavalin. His prior experience was gained while working as a cyber security consultant for the Iranian National Oil Company, a vital infrastructure in the energy sector. His eight years of combined experience in the IT industry, Cyber Security, Compliance, and IT strategy allowed him to gather valuable knowledge that will help industries with the convergence of IT/OT processes.

He has a BSc in Software Engineering and a Master of Applied Science in Quality Systems Engineering from Concordia University.

Andreas Breuer
Andreas Breuer
Head of Hydrogen, Westnetz GmbH
Andreas Breuer is head of hydrogen activities at Westnetz GmbH.  His area of responsibility includes in particular the research and development projects for the hydrogen infrastructures.
In this context, technology trends are identified and evaluated, and he is responsible for their development and ensures their implementation or introduction.
Ron Beck
Ron Beck
Interim President and CEO, UTC

Ron has extensive experience in electronic and communications system design, deployment, and operation – focusing on utility telecommunications, power generation, electric distribution, and their associated industrial control systems (ICS) platforms. He is an advocate of the connected grid, a frequent speaker on subjects related to utility telecommunications modernization, and an active supporter of all things networked.

Ignacio Callen
Ignacio Callen
Senior Vice President of Sales in PowerTrunk

Ignacio Callén, new Senior Vice President of Sales in PowerTrunk (www.powertrunk.com) for Canada, is a veteran Sales & Marketing Telecomms Specialist, with almost 30 years of experience in the Professional Mobile Radio industry. He was supporting the international expansion and consolidation of Teltronic in Pre-Sales Engineering and Marketing fields, with a successful Sales career in Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, Africa, and CIS countries.

Chrissy A. Carr, PE
Chrissy A. Carr, PE
Chief Engineering Officer, Milhouse

Chrissy has 33 years of experience in Critical Infrastructure. Experienced and successful in scaling operations, building strategic partnerships, instilling client confidence, and consistently delivering large-scale, highly complex projects on time and on budget. Leads with authenticity and integrity develop individuals to excel and foster a culture of engagement, collaboration, innovation, and accountability. A key member of the executive leadership team, knowledgeable resource, and valued partner in creating critical infrastructure and strengthening productivity. Navigates effectively across organizational levels, functional areas, and colleagues, clients, and team members. Chrissy spent 32 years at Burns & McDonnell Engineering and the past year starting Critical Infrastructure at Essentia.

Jacqueline Corbett
Jacqueline Corbett
Professor, Management Information Systems Université Laval

Corbett, J. & Savarimuthu, B.T.R. (2022) From Tweets to Insights: A Social Media Analysis of the Emotion Discourse of Sustainable Energy in the United States, Energy Research & Social Science, 89, 1-15.

Corbett, J, & Lakshmi, V. (2022) Combining Design Thinking and the Socio-Technical-Ecological Systems Perspective to Understand Greenhouse Growers’ Experiences with Energy Management Solutions, 55th Hawaii International Conference of System Sciences (HICSS), Maui, HI, January 2022.

Corbett, J. and Lakshmi, V. (2021) “Leveraging the Internet of Things and Open Data to Support Clean Energy in the Greenhouse Sector: Preliminary Summary of Research Findings, February 2021”, Université Laval.

Nishant, R., Kennedy, M. & Corbett, J. (2020) Artificial Intelligence for Sustainability: Challenges, Opportunities, and a Research Agenda, International Journal of Information Management, 53, 1-13.

Wu, R., and Corbett, J. (2019) Insights into Customer Adoption in: Innovation in the Electricity Industry: Focus on Distributed Renewable Electricity Generation, 1(2), p. 1-8.

Corbett, J., Wardle, K. & Chen, C. (2018) Toward a Sustainable Modern Electricity Grid: The Effects of Smart Metering and Program Investments on Demand-Side Management Performance in the US Electricity Sector 2009-2012. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 65(2), 252-263.

Corbett, J., Savarimuthu, T. and Mohanna, M. (2018) Are Electricity Prosumers More Engaged? An Analysis of Brand-Follower Engagement on Twitter, Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS), New Orleans, LA, August 2018.

Wu, R., and Corbett, J. (2018) Exploring the Changing Utility-Customer Relationship in: Innovation in the Electricity Industry: Focus on Distributed Renewable Electricity Generation, 1(1), p. 1-9.

Corbett, J. and Chen, C. (2015) Big Data Efficiency, Information Waste and Lean Big Data Management: Lessons from the Smart Grid Implementation, International Conference on Information Resources Management (Conf-IRM), Ottawa, ON.

Corbett, J. and Webster, J. (2015) Organizational Sensemaking and Big Data Frames: Opportunity, Control and Data Limitation, 48th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), Kauai, Hawaii.

Corbett, J. (2013) Using Information Systems to Improve Energy Efficiency: Do Smart Meters Make a Difference, Information Systems Frontiers, 15, 747–760.

Corbett, J. (2012) Leaders and Lemmings: Organizational Responses to Smart Grid Transformation,   Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS), Seattle, WA.

Corbett, J. (2011) Demand Management in the Smart Grid: An Information Processing Perspective Proceedings of the Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS), Detroit, MI

Simon Hill
Simon Hill
Head of Legal and Compliance, PSI/Certes Networks

As Legal Counsel for Certes Networks, Simon assists with regulatory and compliance issues, contract drafting and negotiations, disputes, intellectual property, and general legal matters.  Simon has extensive international experience in the technology sector, and his combination of both legal and technical skills enables him to translate complex legal regulations and mandates into clear and definitive technical requirements for IT and Engineering teams.

Simon is a regular speaker on data protection and cyber security regulations, including GDPR, HIPAA, NIST Frameworks, and PCI DSS. Simon resides in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Barmak Khosravi
Barmak Khosravi
Telecom Engineer, Hydro-Quebec

Mr. Khosravi is a telecom engineer working at Hydro-Quebec as a wireless architecture team leader in their telecommunications group. Having worked as an Equipment engineering team leader at Rogers Communications, a leading Canadian network operator, Mr. Khosravi brought several innovative cellular solutions to Hydro-Quebec to help solve end-client connectivity challenges.

In particular, he developed the PVNO concept in collaboration with Hydro-Quebec’s research institute (IREQ), and was instrumental in securing policy changes from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to allow Railway and Electrical Operators (REO) to receive private dedicated Mobile Network Codes.

Barmak holds a Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières and a Master’s degree in engineering project management from Université de Sherbrooke.

Marwan Madi
Marwan Madi
Director of Digital Transformation, New York Power Authority

Marwan is a strategy and innovation leader. He brings over 20 years of experience across the government and private sectors, driving industry growth, digital transformation, and organizational change, leveraging a strong understanding of utilities, energy, and transportation technology with business acumen. He successfully oversaw $125M in emerging technologies and policy and strategy formulation and implementation, managing large government and private sector contracts and overseeing performance for cross-functional teams of subject experts. At the New York Power Authority (NYPA), Marwan is responsible for organizational leadership on technology and innovation issues, management of emerging and disruptive trends, and ensuring the alignment of innovation with business strategy, and for driving technology and digital innovation throughout the entire organization.

Senad Palislamovic
Senad Palislamovic
Head of Technology at Nokia Enterprises

As head of the technology enterprise, Senad is responsible for the strategy and technical evolution of Nokia’s enterprise presales organization, solution architecture, and sales engineering teams.  As part of his role, Senad is directly engaged with the customer base spanning from Fortune 500, large and small enterprises all the way to public and private utilities and energy companies.  Senad’s technical involvement with Nokia’s enterprise customer base spans the entire Nokia ION wireline and wireless portfolio.  His current focus is on data center technologies and ongoing DC evolution.  Prior to this role, Senad led a sales engineering organization focusing on SDN and SDWAN technologies as part of Nuage Networks BU.  Before Nuage, Senad worked as Consulting Engineer within Nokia’s RBC ION organization focusing on the service provider market.  And before joining Nokia, Senad spent ten years with Juniper Networks in various customer-facing engineering roles.  Senad holds a BS Degree in Telecommunications from Weber State University and has over 20 years of experience in the networking and telecom industry, is a co-author of the JUNOS High Availability Book, and numerous IETF RFC Standards in the area of IP/MPLS Control Plane signaling.

Jonathan Pollet
Jonathan Pollet
Founder, Executive Director, ​​​​​​​Red Tiger Security

Jonathan Pollet, Founder, and CEO of Red Tiger Security has over 22 years of experience in both Industrial Process Control Systems and Cyber Security. After graduating from the University of New Orleans in Electrical Engineering, he was hired by Chevron and designed and implemented PLC and SCADA systems for onshore and offshore processing facilities in the 1990s. In 2001 he began to publish several white papers that exposed the need for security for Industrial Control Systems (ICS). He is one of the initial charter members of the ISA99/IEC62443 standard, assisted in the drafting of several NERC CIP standards and advisories, and was also on the drafting team for the GIAC GICSP certification. He is still active in the research of vulnerabilities within real-time ICS systems today. Pollet and his team have conducted over 300 security assessments of live Industrial Control Systems around the world in the past 18 years.

Throughout his career, he has been involved with SANS, IEEE, ISA, ISSA, EEI, UTC, CSIA, NERC, and several other professional societies.  Pollet has developed and presented workshops on ICS and SCADA Security to the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense, UK CPNI, Canadian PSEPC, and Australian Ministries of Defense for Critical Infrastructure, and has spoken in over 200 conferences and workshops around the world. He has also been featured on Fox News, CNN, CNBC, Vanity Fair, Popular Mechanics, CIO Magazine, and several security publications.

Mitch Simcoe
Mitch Simcoe
Director, Solution Marketing, Ciena

Mitch Simcoe has over 30 years of experience in the telecommunications industry, starting with Bell Canada and later with Nortel, where he worked in numerous roles in marketing and product management, as well as in product groups including voice switching, broadband access, and optical networking. He later joined GENBAND as Director of Application Marketing and built an application showcase for communication-enabled IT applications.

At Ciena, Mitch is currently the Director of Solution Marketing. In this role, he is responsible for supporting Utilities to modernize and automate their networks, and position Ciena’s solutions for Edge Cloud.

Mitch received a Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical) and a Master of Business Administration in Marketing from McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

Using Digitalization to Address Disrupters Facing the ICT Industry

Artificial Intelligence (AI), predictive analytics, and hydrogen technology are just a few of the disrupters utilities face today as they seek to maximize their networks and bring a strong ROI to their investors and communities.

In today’s world, it’s more important than ever for C-level executives to focus on utilizing digitalization to address these disrupters and the cybersecurity threats facing the ICT industry. There are challenges and opportunities behind the decisions that need to be made, the key is how to maximize them and integrate them into core operations.

At the UTC 2023 Power Grid 4.0 Digitalization Forum, prepare to take a deep dive into the impact disrupters can have. Most importantly over two days, attendees will hear from fellow industry leaders on what can be done now to harness disrupters to help transform utilities’ core business functions.

Join fellow CEO’s, CISO’s, CIO’s, and the full slate of C-level officials from the US and Canada at North America’s premier digitalization event.

AGENDA

Tuesday, October 24th

5:00 PM – 7:00 PM

Welcome Reception – 2nd floor Atrium

Wednesday, October 25th

7:30 AM – 5:00 PM

Registration & Breakfast

8:45 AM – 9:30 AM

Welcome Remarks & Keynote Address: Ron Beck, Interim President and CEO – Utilities Technology Council 

9:30 AM – 10:00 AM

Networking Break

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM

Leveraging the Power of Human and Artificial Intelligence

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Enhancing the Electric Utility through the use of Artificial Intelligence

12:00 PM – 1:30 PM

Networking Luncheon & Presentation

1:30 PM – 1:45 PM

Networking Break

1:45 PM – 2:45 PM

Impact of 5G & AI on your data centers

2:45 PM – 3:00 PM

Networking Break

3:00 PM – 4:00 PM

HydroNet – The Joint Project for Creating a Hydrogen Region in North-Rhine-Westphalia with Global Network Connection

4:00 PM – 5:00 PM

Power Grid Digitalization: TETRA for Utilities

5:30 PM – 7:30 PM

Networking Reception

Thursday, October 26th

7:00 AM

Registration & Breakfast

8:00 AM – 8:15 AM

Welcome Remarks

8:15 AM – 9:15 AM

Innovation Enablement at the New York Power Authority

9:15 AM – 9:30 AM

Networking Break

9:30 AM – 10:30 AM

Private Virtual Network Operations for the Digitize Utility

10:30 AM – 11:30 AM

Why IT / OT security doesn’t stop at the perimeter

11:30 AM – 12:45 PM

Networking Luncheon 

12:45 PM – 1:45 PM

NYPA’s Digital Strategy: The Case for Digital Worker, Intelligent Automation, and Artificial Intelligence

1:45 PM – 2:45 PM

Navigating Complex Threats, Vendor’s Rapid Adoption of Cloud-Based services, Virtualization, and Tech Evolution in a Regulated Utility Climate

2:45 PM – 3:15 PM

Networking Break

3:15 PM – 4:15 PM

Disruptive Technologies in Utilities Cybersecurity

4:15 PM – 5:00 PM

Round Table Recap Journey

5:00 PM – 7:00 PM

Networking Reception – Atrium

SPONSORS

Here’s Why You Should Attend The UTC 2023 Power Grid 4.0 Digitalization Forum

  • The education program and content are tailored to help global C-level executives understand the challenges and opportunities posed by disruptive technology such as AI, Hydrogen technology, and predictive analytics.
  • Today’s utility business environment makes it more important than ever to develop strong operational models to utilize current digitalization to address industry disrupters.
  • Attend insightful sessions on topics such as Smart Grid Technology, Intelligent Automation, Cybersecurity, and Industry Case Studies.
  • Hear from senior utility executives, and leading thought leaders from both the US and Canada who will break down the trends, opportunities, and challenges associated with a digital approach to addressing today’s disrupters.
  • Networking events are geared toward promoting interactive engagement and thought-provoking conversations.

Who Should Attend

Chief Executive Officer

Chief Operations Officer

Chief Information Officer

Chief Technology Officer

Chief Financial Officer

Chief Digital Officer

Chief Data Officer

Chief Information Security Officer

Chief Innovation Officer

Head of Renewables

Chief Security Officer

Head of Smart Grid

Head of Asset & Strategy Management

Head of Asset Management

Head of Network Planning/Technology

Head of Operation Systems

BECOME A MEMBER