WE WOULD LIKE
TO HEAR FROM YOU!
Please
send us updates about your promotions, honors, family news,
etc., to
ecenews@engr.wisc.edu
|
Distinguished Achievement Award Recipient: THOMAS
OVERBYE
t this year’s Engineers Day, Thomas J. Overbye
was one of nine UW-Madison engineering alumni to receive the college’s
Distinguished Achievement Award. Throughout his 22-year engineering
career, Thomas J. Overbye has distinguished himself as an outstanding
educator, a successful entrepreneur, and a top researcher in the field
of electric power transmission and grid behavior. An electrical and
computer engineering professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
Overbye is known for his ability to combine deep, analytical insights
into the complex dynamics of power grids with his practical industry
experience. He is also the founder of PowerWorld Corporation, a leading
developer of software that has improved the accuracy and efficiency
of power system analysis.
As an assistant professor in the early 1990s, Overbye
witnessed dramatic changes in the U.S. utility industry epitomized by
the state of California's efforts to deregulate its power markets. After
observing that individuals with limited knowledge of power-system behavior
were crafting many of the key policies driving deregulation, Overbye
created PowerWorld Simulator to facilitate
more informed decision-making. The software not only depicts a wide
range of physical phenomena in the nation's power grid with extreme
accuracy, but also allows non-specialists to see how proposed regulatory
and business decisions will interact with these phenomena. Since the
founding of PowerWorld in 1996, Simulator's
success has far exceeded that of many long-standing packages offered
by more established companies. In recognition of his creation and transfer
of Simulator to the marketplace, in 2005
Overbye received the first annual Alexander Schwarzkopf Prize for Technological
Innovation from the I/UCRC Association, an organization of past and
present members of the National Science Foundation's Industry/University
Cooperative Research Center program. Overbye has also become a highly
respected science commentator in the press, appearing many times in
the national media following the August 2003 blackout in the eastern
United States.
Overbye holds a BS, MS and PhD in electrical engineering
from UW-Madison. While earning his master's and doctoral degrees, he
also worked as a transmission engineer for the Madison Gas & Electric
Co., helping to develop its real-time power system analysis software.
He is the author of more than 90 scholarly publications and the recipient
of numerous honors, including the IEEE Third Millennium Medal and the
Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer award. He and his wife, Jo, have three
children: Tim, Hannah and Amanda. In the spare time his work and family
allow, Overbye enjoys riding his bicycle through the flat central Illinois
countryside—a welcome change, he says, from biking the hills around
Madison.
