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2024 UAI Excellence Awards Winners

UAI honors the best in the utility analytics profession, recognizing the individuals, teams, and organizations that have achieved and maintained excellence through innovation.

 

The 2024 UAI Excellence Award winners are…

Best Innovative Utility Analytics Team

This award recognizes teams that have set and achieved the highest standards of excellence in utility analytics for problem solving in innovative ways and takes the time to instill that culture in their employees.

WINNER! Rappahannock Electric Cooperative – Enterprise Analytics & Innovation

Best Utility Analytics Leader

This award acknowledges and honors a utility analytics leader who has excelled at supporting any or all analytics work within their utility and who most clearly demonstrates the ability to serve and advance analytics within the utility industry.

WINNER! Eugene Hamrick, Director, Enterprise Analytics & Innovation – Rappahannock Electric Cooperative

Best Utility Analytics Professional

This award recognizes the utility analytics industry’s top professional who possess the knowledge, skills, experience, passion, and business acumen required to provide consistent, quality, and innovative effort that is directly relevant to the utility analytics industry.

WINNER! Scott Ertel, Senior Data Engineer – Entergy

Analytics Ambassador

This award recognizes the lasting contributions, leadership, enthusiasm, and tireless efforts of industry luminaries who’ve committed themselves to elevating the reputation of the utility analytics profession and improving the industry.

WINNER! Neelanjan Patri, Operations Technology, Data & Analytics, Strategic Operations Solutions, COO – Tennessee Valley Authority

Community Engagement

Nominations are not required to qualify for the UAI Community Engagement Awards. UAI selects our winners for this category from a combination of engagement activities, including engagement scores on UAI Connect, UAI Community Conversation involvement, volunteerism with UAI, plus so much more. Two winners have been selected for this category: Most Engaged Individual and Most Engaged Utility.

WINNER! Community Engagement Award – Most Engaged Individual: Tim Krall, Director of Analytics – Exelon

WINNER! Community Engagement Award – Most Engaged Utility: CPS Energy

WINNER! Community Engagement Award – Most Engaged Solution Provider: Logic 2020

Top 25 Thought Leaders in Utility Analytics

Utility analytics professionals are a community minded bunch. They are a conscientious group eager to learn and grow, and to share with one another to help promote excellence in the industry. And so, it is no surprise that this community is also eager to celebrate its champions, those who are the most active in the community and share their insights for the benefit of all. We are proud to celebrate all that these influencers do for our industry with UAI’s Top 25 Thought Leaders in Utility Analytics.

WINNERS! TBA Soon

Damian Baum
Director of Technology and Metering, CIO – Owatonna Pubic Utilities

Carol Bogacz
Principal Consultant – 1898 & Co. (Part of Burns & McDonnell)

Tomer Borenstein
Co-Founder and CEO – BlastPoint

Chris Britsch
Sr. Manager, Data and Analytics – Snohomish County PUD

Elizabeth Cook
Vice President, Technical Strategy – AEIC

Tim Fairchild
(Former) Global Energy Practice Director – SAS

Amanda Fugate
Sr. Director of Enterprise Applications – Evergy

Cara Gilad
Principal Data Scientist – Exelon

Amanda Gomez
Executive Director of Analytics and Digital Products – Consumers Energy

Andrew Kapp
Lead Data Scientist – Evergy

Tuan Le
Manager Data & Analytics Engineering – CPS Energy

Ken McCabe
Senior Data Scientist – Pepco Holdings (an Exelon Company)

Valliappan Muthukaruppan
Principal Quantitative Engineer – Exelon

Mark Peco
Analytics Instructor & Educator – Camar Solutions Inc.

Hesen Peng
Senior Data Scientist – BrillIT (a wholly owned subsidiary of Rappahannock Electric Cooperative)

Samantha Pixley
Sr. Manager, Data Governance | Enterprise Advanced Analytics – CPS Energy

Uma Poduturu
IT Manager, Data Analytics COE – DTE Energy

David Pope
Executive Advisor and Data Intelligence & Analytics Manager – Quanta Technology

Kennedy Porter
Supervisor, Custom DevOps – Oncor Electric Delivery

Arnie Richardson
Managing Director, Strategic Solutions Analytics & Innovation – Duke Energy

Saurabh Sahni
Director, Planning, Scheduling, and Data Analytics – Eversource Energy

Glen Sartain
Managing Director – West Monroe Partners

Raiford Smith
Chief Utility Innovation Officer – AES Corporation

Greg Whicker
Director, ITS – Information Management – Salt River Project

Natalie Winters
Senior Manager, Data Services Engineering – MISO