The daunting task of planning a conference takes a lot of responsibility in order to help the attendees, presenters, and speakers feel safe after the past two years. To make this possible, the responsibility has been divided between several members of our organizing committee and community partners. Without their support, this conference would not be possible. We appreciate our committee and would like to highlight some individuals with our conference, and we know that we could not function without our volunteer leaders.

Bradley Updyke, PE

Conference Chair

Bradley Updyke, PE first earned his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Bradley is currently licensed  in Texas, California, and Nevada. He is currently a project manager at Telios and owner of an affiliate firm, Teliosity. He doubles as a manager for the certified HUB and minority owned building, where they prioritize system engineering and construction. Beyond this he has led electrical engineering for various real estate projects including, new micro-hospitals, entertainment facilities, medical office buildings andTexas educational facilities.

While in college, Bradley received the Engineering Student of the Year award from the Florida Engineering Society (“FES”) Tampa chapters, and he began his participation in IEEE in 2014. As an active IEEE Houston Section member, Bradley received the IEEE Volunteer Appreciation award in 2014 and 2015. In 2019, he received the IEEE Young Engineer of the Year. This award is given to an outstanding Houston Section Young Professional member during Houston Engineers Week. Bradley will serve as the Conference Chair of GreenTech 2022.

Nasr Ullah

Technical Conference Chair

Nasr Ullah has over 35 years experience in the Semiconductor industry. He is responsible for recruiting and building several systems and software teams including performance analysis, simulation and modeling, power architecture, workload characterization, software enablement and Application software for Motorola, Apple-Motorola-IBM Somerset Design Center, Freescale Semiconductor, Samsung Electronics and the RISC-V startup SiFive. Ullah has created organizations of global software, hardware and performance engineers in Austin, California, India and China and put structures in place to closely align team activities with design organizations, marketing teams, and customer-facing teams for Motorola & Freescale’s PowerPC Architecture products. He has also managed global teams in Texas and India for Motorola; China, California and Texas for Freescale, and Texas and Taiwan for SiFive.

Having considerable global acumen, Nasr Ullah grew up and lived in five countries in four continents. He has had significant professional involvement with professional organizations such as IEEE, IEEE Computer Society and ACM as well as academia, where he has published over two dozen technical papers in professional publications and served as chair for over a dozen international professional conferences. He was invited as panelists in multiple industry forums as well.

Dr. Irfan Khan

Technical Conference Co-Chair

Irfan Khan is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Marine Engineering Technology with a joint appointment with the Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M College Station. He is the director of the Clean And Resilient Energy Systems (CARES) Lab that focuses on the reliability, sustainability, and security of the electric energy supply on marine vessels. He has been fortunate to receive several grants from multiple funding agencies to work on marine electric distribution systems, electric vehicle fast charging, and electric microgrids. He has done pioneering work in distributed grids and shipboard power systems monitoring. Dr. Khan is an affiliate faculty member with the TAMU Energy Institute and the TEES Smart Grid Center. Before joining TAMU in 2018, Dr. Khan received a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University USA. His current research interests include the optimization, control, and monitoring of smart energy networks, optimization of energy storage systems, DC Microgrids, smart grids, and renewable energy resources. He has published more than 95 refereed reputed journal and peer-reviewed conference papers in the smart energy systems-related areas.

Dr. Khan is a registered Professional Engineer (P.E.) with the State of Texas, USA. He is the Vice-Chair for the IEEE Galveston Bay Section (GBS) of Region 5. Dr. Khan was the registration chair at the IEEE sponsored International Symposium on Measurement and Control in Robotics, organized at the University of Houston Clear Lake on September 19-21, 2019. He has organized several special sessions at various international conferences. Further, Dr. Khan is a regular reviewer of more than 30 reputed journals and conferences, wherein the year 2020, he reviewed more than 230 articles. He is also helping with editorial responsibilities at various journals, e.g., IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, IEEE Access, Energies MDPI, Electronics MDPI, Frontiers in Energy Research, etc.

James Epkins Jr.

Webmaster 

James Epkins Jr. is a third year undergraduate majoring in electrical engineering at Lamar University. He will serve as the Webmaster for the 2022 GreenTech website. James has been an IEEE member since 2019 and has also served as the IEEE Houston Section Webmaster for 2 years. He has an interest in electrical power systems and is a member of  the IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES). Some of his interests include smart grid technology, grid reliability. James is seeking to one day work with the design and development of high voltage electrical systems and looks forward to making an impact through the building, designing, or maintaining a reliable and sustainable grid.

Ayanna Johnson 

Contributing Writer and Editor

Ayanna is a third year undergraduate student in Biomedical Engineering at Gallogly College of Engineering, University of Oklahoma. She is currently a Technology Assistant for the Center of Economic Management Research at her school’s business college. Ayanna has been a part of IEEE and EMBS since September 2019, and currently holds an SAC position as Executive Editor. Her primary interests are neurobiology and medical technical writing, as she plans to publish later in her career. With areas of understanding in device configuration, troubleshooting, and social media marketing, she is always excited to increase her skill set and contribute to the overall success of the team.

Alex Howell

Social Media Manager

Alex Howell is a graduate from the University of Houston with a degree in Computer Engineering. He started volunteering with IEEE early in his time at UH. Eventually, he made his way to be the Webmaster for the chapter and then became the Marketing Chair. Getting some experience from UH, he went on to join the IEEE Galveston Bay Section as the Vice Chair of Social Media. Now along with those duties, Alex Howell has joined the GreenTech Conference Committee to manage our Social Media.