Cleantech Group

Fatima Crerar

Bob Currie

Bob is Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder of Smarter Grid Solutions and leads the company’s R&D division. SGS works with a number of utility companies in Europe, North America and beyond, providing Distributed Energy Resource Management Systems to support Grid Modernization and clean energy objectives. At present, SGS is managing around 300 MW of DER using its unique distributed real-time control technology. Bob participated in the UK Smart Grid Forum with a focus on the implementation of the RIIO regulatory framework. In New York, Bob was a member of the REV Market Design and Technology Platform working groups and more recently became a member of the NYSERDA Grid Modernization Committee. Bob also serves on the Industry Advisory Board of the DOE Grid Apps-D Platform and ADMS Testbed Development programs. SGS was named a Bloomberg New Energy Pioneer in 2012 and a GreenTech Media Grid Edge Award winner in 2016. Bob received his Bachelors, Masters and PhD degrees from the University of Strathclyde, Scotland.

Oliver Davis

Oliver brings 20 years of technology startup and large company management experience in product, marketing, business development and operations.  As CEO and Co-Founder of concept3D Inc., Oliver led the creation, development and commercialization of its industry leading mapping platform and 3D services business. Borne through concept3D’s collaboration with NREL, simuwatt is a leading field and cloud platform used to identify, collect, design and act on energy efficiency measures in commercial buildings.

Rimas Gulbinas

Rimas Gulbinas, PhD and his team formed Maalka to address the most complex challenges associated with large-scale sustainability programs.

Founded in New York City 4 years ago, Maalka is a Department of Commerce NTIS Joint Venture Partner, Cushman & Wakefield Technology Partner, Wells Fargo IN2 Company, Department of Energy SBIR award winner, and NYU Urban Future Lab member. Maalka technology is being used by major cities and organizations across the United States to deploy data-driven programs that align with proven frameworks developed by industry leaders.

Shawn Malhotra

Shawn Malhotra is Vice President of the Thomson Reuters Toronto Technology Centre.

Located in Bremner Tower, the Toronto Technology Centre is a key component of Thomson Reuters vision of delivering world-class, customer-centric platforms and solutions of the future. Its proximity to large and strategic customers enables rapid, customer-driven innovation, particularly in Toronto’s fast growing fintech community.

In this role, Malhotra is responsible for bringing the Centre’s long-term vision to life and building on its position as a global technology employer of choice as it creates up to 1,500 local jobs over time. He also drives the Centre’s focus on emerging skills such as cognitive computing, visualization, user experience and cloud development.

Malhtora joined Thomson Reuters in 2017 from Intel, where managed a global team of engineers responsible for graph optimization algorithms related to electronic design automation. He also served as Site Director for Intel’s Toronto Technology Centre, home to about 200 employees. Prior to this, he was a Software Developer at Intel Programmable Solutions Group (formerly Altera).

Malhotra is a graduate of the University of Waterloo’s Computer Engineering program and holds a Master’s of Engineering degree from the University of Toronto.He is credited with 4 issued US patents and two published papers.

Matt Sachs

Bruce Schneier

Bruce Schneier is an internationally renowned security technologist and bestselling author of several books on data privacy and security, including his newly released Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-Connected World, in which he argues regulation is inevitable as the Internet of Things begins to transform our cities, infrastructure and lives. Schneier, a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center, is also Chief Technology Officer of IBM Resilient and a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Abe Stanway

Matt Stevens

Matt Stevens is CEO of FleetCarma.  FleetCarma is a connected car platform, uniquely capable of supporting electric vehicle adoption and deployment. Fleets, electric utilities, and leasing companies turn to FleetCarma to ensure EV owners have an excellent ownership experience and that fleets obtain a positive ROI on their EV fleet.  More recently, utilities are deploying FleetCarma’s SmartCharge Rewards and SmartCharge Manager solutions to ensure they can support a large number of electric vehicles in their service area.

FleetCarma was acquired by Geotab in June 2018.

Matt holds a Ph.D. in Engineering, with a focus on electrified powertrain design and battery degradation.

Sasha Sud

Sasha leads the Smart Cities initiative as part of the Partnerships team at MaRS. This initiative aims to catalyze the adoption of innovation across several rapidly evolving sectors that falls under the Smart Cities umbrella. This initiative does a deep dive on the quick-paced transformations being experienced in the mobility and buildings sectors and also includes their convergence and integration with other key technologies areas, such as energy and health.

Over the last 5+ years at MaRS, Sasha’s work has actively contributed to streamlining the adoption of innovative solutions that would otherwise struggle with adoption in highly complex and regulated sectors such as energy, transportation, buildings and infrastructure. These projects have involved leading, convening and catalyzing various key stakeholders – ranging from industry, government, academia, regulators, key users,  and civic society.

In the energy sector, these efforts resulted in the regulation of the Green Button (GB) standard in Ontario. The GB standard will make all utility data available to users and user authorized service providers through an electronic, standardized, simple and secure data format and process.  This has enabled the development of innovative products and services in international markets and is providing consumers with greater choice. Sasha’s role on the Board of Directors of the Green Button Alliance helped guide the standard’s evolution to meet the market’s changing needs and emerging uses cases.

In the mobility space, Sasha is leading the development of projects and partnerships with key stakeholders across both the public and private sector. These efforts are driving prototype development, innovative procurement models, pilot implementation, new business models and regulatory changes.

Prior to his work at MaRS, Sasha was involved in leading the design and delivery of smart-grid enabled conservation and demand response programs in Ontario.  Sasha’s career has spanned three continents, where he worked on energy and climate change long term policy analysis for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in the UK, The Energy Research Institute in India and has also conducted socio-economic analysis for the Ontario Government in Canada.

In line with his work experience, he received a distinction from the University of Oxford for completing his Masters in Environmental Change and Management – where he specialized in Climate Change, Energy Management and Environmental Finance.

Andrew Young

Andrew Young is the Knowledge Director at The GovLab, where he leads research efforts focusing on the impact of technology on public institutions. Among the grant-funded projects he has directed are a global assessment of the impact of open government data; comparative benchmarking of government innovation efforts against those of other countries; a methodology for leveraging corporate data to benefit the public good; and crafting the experimental design for testing the adoption of technology innovations in federal agencies.

Andrew has authored or co-authored a number of extended works on new approaches for improving governance with technology, including the books The Global Impact of Open Data and Open Data in Developing Economies. He also contributed a chapter to Smarter New York City – How City Agencies Innovate from Columbia University Press.

He is also the Network Coordinator of the GovLab-chaired MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Opening Governance. In this role, he plans and organizes collaborative research projects and events with the Network’s members, post-docs, and advisory group who span a dozen disciplines and institutions. Andrew works closely with GovLab civic technology team and has led the design of the Network of Innovators skill sharing network for civil servants and the Open Governance Research Exchange (OGRX), a collaborative project of the GovLab, World Bank, and mySociety to develop a platform for accessing and sharing original research on governance innovation.

In his role as Knowledge Director, Andrew seeks to make GovLab’s research more accessible and actionable, and provides research and writing support to all members of GovLab’s team and to its extended network of participants in GovLab’s training programs.

Andrew earned his Master’s degree in the Media, Culture and Communication department of NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, with a focus on Technology and Society. His Master’s thesis explored the use of data-tracking technologies on congressional campaign websites to inform microtargeting efforts.

Before arriving at the GovLab, Andrew worked with Chief of Research Stefaan Verhulst at the Markle Foundation, where his research centered on the use of technology to bolster economic security.

Prior to his graduate work at NYU, Andrew attended Pennsylvania State University and Goldsmiths College, University of London, where he studied English and Communications. His writings can be found in Harvard Business Review, Stanford Social Innovation Review, GrantCraft, and Governing, among others. He tweets at @_AndrewYoung.