Jonathan William Babb, Ph.D., CTO and University Relations Manager

Jonathan Babb, Ph.D. is chief technology officer and manager of university relations at OSA. He is the technical architect and leader of PowrSym development endeavors to optimize fuel delivery networks, integrate hydrodynamic flow and storage with power system dispatch, and minimize unit commitment costs using a combination of dynamic programming, network flow, and other optimal control theories. He also leads the development of assistive technology at OSA, including a Morse Code input device (Comax) to support computer accessibility for individuals with a disability, or in other situations where direct keyboard input is limited. Jonathan's role as university relations manager is to foster a collaborative atmosphere between industry and academia in order to enable an integrative approach to addressing global energy issues.

Jonathan received a BSEE from Georgia Tech (1991), where he developed silicon microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), and MS (1994) and PhD (2001) degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT under an NSF Fellowship, where he invented Virtual Wires logic emulation and developed a high-level language compiler to silicon and reconfigurable computer architectures. He has been an advisor and angel investor to a company creating energy-efficient building materials from reclaimed coal flyash, founder and CEO of an FPGA-based logic emulation company now owned by Mentor Graphics, and has taught VLSI circuit design as a lecturer at Princeton University. Formerly, he has worked at Honeywell and Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) on the development of embedded systems and software for the NASA space station and the B1B aircraft.

Jonathan's energy-related research interests include smart grids, demand-side-management, and energy-conserving digital electronics. In addition, he is funded under a postdoctoral appointment at MIT to genetically engineer reconfigurable biocircuits for applications ranging from alternative fuels and pollution control to diabetes and cancer therapy. Current research interests also include multicore and special-purpose computer architectures, FPGA-based reconfigurable computing, VLSI, CAD, and parallel compilers. He holds multiple patents and has published in journals such as IEEE Transactions on CAD and IEEE Computer.