Peter McKenzie is Managing Director of the Solar Technology Consulting Co. (STC) based in Boston, MA. During the past six years, much of STC's efforts have centered around the development and implementation of sustainable financing tools for photovoltaic power systems. During the past two years, STC has been based in Hyderabad, India, where Mr. McKenzie served as Executive Marketing Director of Renewable Energy Systems. In these positions he has established a multi-organizational marketing network to develop packaged solar products for remote and rural populations not being served by reliable electric services.
A native of Australia, Mr. McKenzie graduated from the Western Australia University of Technology. He has served in a progression of photovoltaic businesses dating back to the mid-1970's, when he was stationed in Papua New Guinea with accountability for installing the first complete PV-powered microwave telecommunications system in the world. These communication units used solar power with a diesel backup generator. Such a hybrid combination remains the most common form of integrating renewables into village power today and forms the core concept of the Suntainer Kiosk systems developed by New ERA.
Peter moved to the United States in 1979 to assist Atlantic Richfield (ARCO) in initiating its solar program activities and in 1988 became a U.S. citizen. Since that time, he has managed the regional field offices for ARCO Solar and Siemens Solar in Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore. His experience in these organizations includes leading successful efforts to secure financing for solar projects involving the International Finance Corporation in the U.S., GTZ in Germany and JICA in Japan for projects in Bangladesh, Philippines, Maldives, Pakistan, Thailand, Indonesia, China, Nepal and India.
Mr. Burkhart received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1975 from Illinois Institute of Technology and a Master of Science degree from the University of Southern California in 1983. Following completion of his undergraduate studies, he served more than 13 years on active duty in the U.S. Navy in various capacities in the communications and computing fields. Following his naval service, he accepted a civil service appointment. In 1991, Mr. Burkhart founded Allied Communications Engineering, and subsequently incorporated the company and left government service for full-time consulting engineering in 1992.
Mr. Burkhart has provided a variety of services related to the information technology sector in Russia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East, including consulting for government agencies and private companies and representation of major American companies seeking to develop practices in new overseas markets. He has authored several monographs on the status of information technology in developing countries, and has contributed to studies of the effects and utility of export controls and the national security implications of the global diffusion of information technology for the U.S. government. He currently studies the progress of information technology in developing countries, concentrating on the Near East and North Africa, and conducts telecommunications studies and development projects for public and private companies in the region.
Email: g.burkhart@computer.org
A Senior Member of the IEEE, Dr. Kern is a member of the Energy Development Subcommittee of the Power Generation Committee. He served the Power Generation Committee representative to the IEEE Standards Coordinating Committee on Dispersed Storage and Generation, and helped develop the IEEE Guide for Interfacing Dispersed Storage and Generation with Utility Systems. He has been a consultant to the Washington office of the Electric Power Research Institute on photovoltaic applications and served on the Science and Technology Review Committee for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's Solar Radiation Resource Assessment Project.
In addition to his work with photovoltaic systems, he has directed the development of a non-intrusive method for acquiring electric end-use load data using pattern recognition and signature analysis techniques. He holds two U.S. patents and is the author of numerous papers and reports on end-use electric power consumption, distributed photovoltaic generation and early, cost-effective PV applications for electric utilities.
As President of Ascension Technology, Dr. Kern has grown the company from two to twelve employees over eleven years and while serving photovoltaic system research, development, engineering and installation projects across the United States and in Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil, South Africa, and India, where Ascension Technology installed one of India's largest photovoltaic installations. Dr. Kern is a graduate of Dartmouth College and received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dr. McDonald is president of Global Health
Initiatives, Inc., chairman of the board of
Dr. McDonald has worked for numerous government agencies (e.g., FDA, NCI,
OMB, OASH, ODPHP, NIST, NTIA, OTA, CDC, NSF) on projects related to health
promotion, health information systems, and the social impact of the
information infrastructure. He has been a member of a National Academy of
Sciences planning committee on the national health information
infrastructure. He has supervised several health system projects for
corporations, cities, counties, hospitals, and insurance companies.
Dr. McDonald is involved in policy development regarding the health
information infrastructure on state, national, and international levels.
He has helped to draft language for Congressional bills (e.g., Chairman
Boucher's H.R. 1757: High Performance Computing and Networking Act,
Congressman LaRocco's H.R. 3070: Rural Health and Education Infrastructure
Act). He is presently engaged in several projects in the public and
private sectors related to health system reengineering and the national
information infrastructure initiative (information superhighways).
Dr. McDonald is an expert in wellness-oriented health systems. His
pioneering work includes involvement in establishing the general public/
health information interface and developing the foundations of
health-oriented community networking. He has published extensively in
these areas. He has coordinated several professional meetings on health
information infrastructure (e.g., 1992 and 1993 National Health
Information Infrastructure Plenaries, Healthy Cities Communications
Toolbox Summit), provided expertise to the White House, and given
testimony on these issues to several congressional subcommittees over the
past few years. Over the past three years, he oversaw The Koop Foundation
Inc. in health, technology, and health information infrastructure.
In his work at the Koop Foundation, Inc., Dr. McDonald managed the HII Consortium, a group of approximately
110 key leaders from the health sector, computing, telecommunications,
employers, and consumer groups, which is establishing some of the
fundamental policies and principles of the HII (Health Information
Infrastructure). He was the principal investigator on two large research
and development efforts funded by NIST and two consortia of private sector
companies: 1) a $30 million HII Toolset R&D project focused on business
process reengineering tools; and 2) the $20 million HOLON R&D project
focused on building a middleware architecture with a health object
repository and intelligent agents to democratize the production of health
applications.
Dr. McDonald has been a consultant in developing a design for the health
information infrastructure in Africa through the auspices of the World
Health Organization, the United Nations Outer Space Agency, and the
European Space Agency. He is now working with the Pan American Health
Organization, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the World Health
Organization to help develop an extensible and scaleable health
information infrastructure for the Western Hemisphere through a plan for
National Collaborating Centers and Model Centers throughout North America,
Latin America, and the Caribbean.
Michael D. McDonald, Dr.P.H.
Dr. Gay came to NREL from UNISUN, a
California-based consulting firm
specializing in tools for financing renewable energy projects, which he
co-founded in 1993. Previously he was President of Siemens Solar
Industries in Camarillo, CA. He served in various positions with ARCO
Solar, Inc. in California from 1978 to 1990, including Senior Vice
President of Manufacturing, Research and Engineering. He was appointed
President of ARCO Solar in 1988.
Dr. Gay began his career at Spectrolab, Inc., which is a subsidiary of
Hughes Aircraft Co. There he designed and built high performance
satellite solar cells for NASA and Air Force space applications. He
joined ARCO Solar in 1978 where he established the research and
development program, and was project leader for the transfer of single
crystal silicon solar cell technology from bench top to mass production.
Dr. Gay has a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of
California, Riverside. His areas of expertise include solar cell
technology, technology transfer, photovoltaics mass production, product
development, international marketing and sales, business plan development
and project financing.
The North Communications sites on the Web provide more detail, at
http://www.infonorth.com and
http://www.kioskstore.com.
Michael's professional background is in magazine publishing, in computer
networking and in broadcast television production. His daughter studies
Middle East archeology at UCLA; personal interests include novel and
screenplay writing, music composition, and scuba diving in Hawaii.
Email: MNorth@infonorth.com or
mjnorth@ix.netcom.com.
File Date: 23 Oct 98
10604 Crossing Creek Road
Potomac, MD 20854
Tel: (301) 299-1507 / Fax: (301) 299-1509
Dr. Charles F. Gay
Dr. Gay is President and Chief Executive Officer of ASE Americas, the third largest solar
cell manufacturer in the United States. Previously, he served as Senior
Vice President of the Midwest Research Institute (MRI) and in that
position served as Director of the U.S. Department of Energy's National
Renewable Energy Laboratory from January 1995 until 1997. As Director of
the nation s leading laboratory for energy efficiency and renewable energy
research and technology commercialization, Dr. Gay was responsible for a
budget of more than $237 million and 1,000 employees.
Michael North
Michael North is the founder of North
Communications, a leading public access network company. Since 1986,
the firm has built hundreds of electronic commerce solutions that deliver
complex transactions to the general public through touchscreen kiosks. Its
clients include U.S. Federal agencies (Social Security), state
governments (Texas and California), city administrations (New York and
Houston), banks and corporations (Citizens Bank, MCI and Sears), and the
national governments of Canada, Singapore, Australia and Malaysia. The
company counts Microsoft, Andersen Consulting, Hewlett Packard and others
among its allies, and has received many international awards for its work,
including the Kennedy School of Government/Ford Foundation (twice).
Michael has testified on numerous occasions to Congressional groups on
communications industry policies.
Personal website: http://www.netcom.com/~mjnorth