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Kenneth Wacks

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Member Status
Emeritus
Member Bio

Dr. Wacks has been a pioneer in establishing the home systems industry and a management advisor to more than 150 clients worldwide. His business specialties include IoT (Internet of Things) and cybersecurity for home and building systems, energy management for smart grids, and digital media networks. He also provides due-diligence for investors and expert witness services for litigants including patent, non-compete, trade-secret, and contract cases. Please visit kenwacks.com for information about his industry services, projects, and publications.

Dr. Wacks was appointed by the United States Department of Energy to serve four terms on the GridWise Architecture Council, focusing on the grid interface to customer equipment including DER (local power from wind, solar, and storage) managed automatically with artificial intelligence (AI). He is a founding member of the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel, now part of the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA). He chairs the Customer Grid Edge committee at the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC).

The member nations of ISO/IEC have elected Dr. Wacks chair of the committee developing international home and building system standards for nine terms. He received the "IEC 1906 Award" commemorating the founding of the IEC in 1906 and honoring experts whose work is fundamental to world standards. He has also written American National Standards in home automation and networked appliances for the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), where he chairs the energy management standards committee.

Dr. Wacks is a featured contributor to the ASHB Journal (formerly the CABA Journal and "iHomes & Buildings," and a prolific author (more than 340 papers and presentations). He wrote the book "Home Automation and Utility Customer Services." As an entrepreneur at a venture-backed startup, he developed UNIX workstations for the semiconductor industry.

Dr. Wacks received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from MIT as a Hertz Fellow and studied at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is participating in the Cybersecurity at MIT Sloan (CAMS) consortium investigating corporate initiatives to enhance data security.