Keynote 1: Jessica J. Bian, PES President (2022-2023)
Brief Biography of Jessica J. Bian
Jessica Bian is the 2022-2023 PES President. She is a visionary leader and architect who has spearheaded the electric industry’s reliability metrics and grid-risk assessment. She is currently with Grid-X Partners. Before that, she was with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Washington, D.C. Previously, she was the director of performance analysis at the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) in Atlanta, Georgia. Under her leadership, a total of 18 industry-wide reliability indicators were established for the first time to determine grid reliability, adequacy, and associated risks. She is widely recognized as a pioneer and trusted world leader in the field. Before joining NERC, Jessica was with PJM, ERCOT, and Westinghouse Electric.
Jessica J. Bian
Grid-X Partners, Wayne, IL, USA
2022-2023 PES President
She received her B.Sc. degree from the Taiyuan University of Technology, China, her M.Sc. degree from the Electric Power Research Institute, Beijing, China, and her Ph.D. degree from Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana. She has had more than 70 articles published, and she received the 2014 PES Wanda Reder Pioneer in Power Award for her technical achievements. She is a Senior Member of the IEEE.
Keynote Title: More Power to Your Future – PES Strategic Long-Range Plan
It is my great honor, serving as President (2022-2023) and Secretary (2016-2019) in the IEEE PES Governing Board for the last five years and helping fulfill the PES Mission – To be the leading provider of scientific and engineering information on electric power and energy for the betterment of society, and the preferred professional development source for our members.
The PES President is responsible for developing and maintaining the PES strategic long-range plan (LRP). Since January 2022, I have been working with the PES Long-Range Planning Committee to update strategic goals, actions, and metrics around membership services. Our industry is changing fast. The PES strategic long-range plan focuses on membership and chapters’ needs in some major functional areas – technical activities including standards, meetings and conferences, publications, and education, as shown in the chart below. The outer layer of initiatives and outreach provides new and important public imperatives, e.g., Smart City Program. The LRP strategies are:
- Develop stronger liaison with industry
- Improve global presence and strengthen participation
- Increase coordination among the five functional areas
- Promote diversified demographics of chapters, membership, and image
- Grow life-long learning offerings
Back in the 1960s, the half-life of knowledge is a phrase attributed to economist Fritz Machlup, who studied, among other things, the economic value of knowledge. How long is your degree going to last? Machlup, and others of his day, discovered that while an engineering degree acquired in 1930 was useful for about 35 years before most of the fundamentals a person learned while earning that degree were no longer true, because of the new development of better techniques, the half-life of an engineering degree earned in 1960 was only relevant for about 10 years.
In 2002, the US National Academy of Engineering estimated that the half-life of engineering knowledge was somewhere between 7 and 2.5 years. If you are an engineer or a computer professional, the danger of becoming technologically obsolete is an ever-growing risk. To be an engineer is to accept the fact that at some future time—always sooner than one expects—most of the technical knowledge you once worked hard to master will be obsolete.
To replace that obsolete knowledge and assuming there are 48 weeks a year in which to devote to knowledge replacement, an engineer would need to spend 5 hours each of those weeks gaining new technology, mathematics, and scientific knowledge if he or she wished to remain technically current.
PES has been leading to provide life-long learning resources, services, and events over the decades. It is our engineers’ ideal home to replace that obsolete knowledge and get continued education hours. In addition, PES enhances diverse opportunities and values for all PES members globally through the following programs:
- Together with various organizations, co-sponsor for its members’ one-day workshops and webinars on industry megatrends and other relevant topics
- Collaborate with other industry technology associations
- Develop short courses in local languages
- Participate in and contribute to technical committee work
- Participate in mentorship and coaching
PES will continue to monitor, grow existing life-long learning offerings, deliver timely technological information, get our members ready for industry transformation, and give more power to your future.