John Teeter will be leaving his favorite endurance horse 'Sunny' at home while he spends a twelve month 'Tour of Duty' in Washington DC. pictured at left John Teeter and Amara's Sonata, at right Steph Teeter and Jaziret Bey Musc riding in Owyhee County, Idaho. photo by Steve Bradley.
Three Presidential Innovation Fellows Begin Work at NIST
Three of this year's Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIF) began work at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on June 18, 2013, helping the institute address issues relating to connecting networks of machines, facilities and people, and also to help energy consumers make better use of their energy usage data.
Presidential Innovation Fellows
NIST's Presidential Innovation Fellows are (L-R) Sokwoo Rhee and Geoff Mulligan, who will work on cyber physical systems, and John Teeter (far right), who will work on the Green Button Initiative. The three fellows, part of the second round of the PIF program, started their 12-month tours at NIST on June 18, 2013.
NIST photo Credit: Greb/NIST
Two of NIST's fellows, Geoff Mulligan and Sokwoo Rhee, will work on cyber-physical systems (CPS). These new "smart systems" will combine networking, information and communication technologies to optimize system performance in real time. Accelerated development of CPS is expected to yield new manufactured products and services in a range of industry sectors essential to U.S. competitiveness, including manufacturing, transportation, energy, health care and defense. NIST's fellows will lead a multidisciplinary team of experts from the private and public sectors and work for consensus in developing a framework consisting of high-level reference architecture, standards and protocols for CPS.*
Mulligan has been instrumental in Internet development, recently having helped design IPv6, the latest version of the communications protocol that routes traffic across the Internet. He holds over 15 patents in computer security, networking and electronic mail, and was called to testify before Congress on electronic commerce and computer security.
Rhee is an entrepreneur who helped to initiate the cyber-physical systems and "internet of things" industry in the early 2000s. His work and achievements have been recognized by multiple awards including MIT Technology Review's Top Innovators under 35.
NIST's third fellow, John Teeter, will work on the Green Button Initiative,** which aims to enable energy customers to download their energy usage data securely in machine-readable format directly from utilities. He will be part of a "Green Button for America" team, the other member of which will work from the Department of Energy. A key goal will be to provide leadership to enhance Green Button data consistency through testing and certification, based on feedback from consumers, vendors and utilities.
Teeter has a 40-year history in the electrical and technology industries, including most recently as chief scientist for People Power, a software company enabling remote control and management of connected devices from mobile devices. Teeter was the founder and CEO of First Step Research, prior to which he was a founder and VP of Engineering at Gold Hill Computers.
The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) runs the PIF program, now in its second year, and asked agencies across the government to propose new research areas to expand the PIF program for this year. NIST's two proposals were among those selected, bringing the number of project areas up to nine from last year's five. Fellows are funded by the sponsoring agencies.
More information is available in the White House blog post, "New Round of Innovators Joins US Government to Tackle Big Challenges" at www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/06/24/new-round-innovators-joins-us-government-tackle-big-challenges.
* For more on NIST work in cyber-physical systems, see www.nist.gov/el/smartcyber.cfm.
** For more on NIST work on the Green Button Initiative, see www.nist.gov/smartgrid/greenbutton.cfm.
NIST Media Contact: Chad Boutin, boutin@nist.gov, 301-975-4261
