Speakers

Lance Brown, Vice President of Customer Service Solutions at SEW, is a customer service professional with more than 35 years of experience in the public utility and retail industries. The majority of this experience comes from his career with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), the largest municipal utility in the United States. He was promoted to director of customer services in 2006 and remained in that position until his retirement in February 2011. As director, he was responsible for the activities of more than 1,500 employees directly involved in providing customer service to more than 1.8 million customers. His areas of responsibility were comprised of the customer contact center and customer service centers; field services including meter reading, field service, and revenue security; and revenue management including billing and collections, remittance processing and mail center operations. During Lance’s tenure with the LADWP, he was involved in numerous major projects including installing and implementing new interactive voice response systems, new field order deployment systems and upgrades, improvements in meter reading systems, and software and hardware projects for remittance processing and mail center operations. He also belonged to several customer service organizations including the American Public Power Association, the California Municipal Utilities Association, and the Call Center Network Group. Due to his vast customer service knowledge and experience, upon his retirement he was asked to remain, on contract, to provide advisory support for the new customer service information system, a major system upgrade and implementation. Lance graduated from California State University at Northridge. He is dedicated to helping organizations provide excellent customer service.

Prof. Adrian Law Wing Keung received his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley.  He was a practicing engineer in the USA for more than 7 years, before joining the academic faculty of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. At NTU, he is also the Director of the Environmental Process Modelling Centre (EPMC) under the Nanyang Environment and Water Research Institute (NEWRI). His current research focuses on the use of expert knowledge of environmental fluid mechanics to improve the design of environmental systems.  He was awarded both the Wesley Horner Award and Karl Emil Hilgard Hydraulic Prize by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and two Outstanding Technical Paper Awards by the Bechtel Corporation, USA.  He also received the Outstanding Reviewer Award from Journal of Hydraulic Engineering, ASCE, in 2012. He was the UPS Foundation Visiting Professor at Stanford University, William Mong Research Fellow at the University of Hong Kong, and also Faculty Fellow of the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology.  Currently, he is Associate Editors and Editorial Board Members of related journals in this area.

Excellency Tun Lean is currently the Under Secretary of State of the Ministry of Mines and Energy of the Kingdom of Cambodia. His main responsibility is in the areas of energy policy; strategy and planning. His previous appointments include Director General of General Department of Energy; Chairman of the Board of the state-owned electricity company knowsn as Electricité du Cambodge (EDC);  Deputy Director General; and Director of Department of Energy Development. For many years, he has been involved in various regional cooperations such as the Senior Officials Meeting on Energy (SOME); ASEAN Ministers of Energy Meeting (AMEM) and the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS).

Dr. Liu Yang is a Senior Research Fellow in Energy Studies Institute, National University of Singapore. His research area involves energy efficiency, smart energy systems and climate finance. Prior to this position, He was an Energy Specialist at the International Energy Agency (IEA), where he focused on monitoring of energy efficiency trends and impacts in emerging economies, as well as providing technical assistance to governments and businesses.

Dr. Liu has a blend of operational and academic experience in clean energy, public policy, and sustainability strategy. Over the last few years, he has published widely on the topics of energy efficiency, renewable energy and policy evaluation in well-recognised journals including Energy Journal and Energy Economics, and he has co-authored the 2015 and 2016 IEA Global Energy Efficiency Market Reports. He earned his Ph.D. in Energy Economics from the Ecole Polytechnique of France.

Michael Lochinvar Sim Abundo is the Managing Director of OceanPixel Pte. Ltd, a Singapore-based company that is dedicated to the development of ocean renewable energy in the South East Asia Region. He was a Research Fellow working with Wind and Marine Renewables Group of Energy Research Institute at Nanyang Technological University (ERI@N) in Singapore focusing on Marine Renewable Energy Systems. He currently handles tidal and wave renewable energy projects in various stages in South East Asia.

Dr. Gal Luft is co-director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS) a Washington based think tank focused on energy security, and a senior adviser to the United States Energy Security Council, a cabinet level extra governmental advisory committee. He is also Co-chairman of the Global Forum on Energy Security and Senior Adviser to the China Energy Fund Committee. Dr. Luft has published numerous studies and articles on security and energy issues. He is co-author of the books Energy Security Challenges for the 21st Century (2009,) Turning Oil into Salt: Energy Independence Through Fuel Choice(2009) and Petropoly: The Collapse of America's Energy Security Paradigm (2012). He appears frequently in the media and consults to various think tanks, corporations and news organizations worldwide. He holds degrees in international relations, international economics and strategic studies and a doctorate in strategic studies from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS,) Johns Hopkins University.