With over 30 years of experience in engineering, consulting, and leadership, Sam is the President & CEO of Middough Inc. Middough provides major project solutions and consulting by combining the experience, expertise and reach of a large EPCM firm with the flexibility and customer focus of a local service provider. Sam leads the executive team and oversees the functional and financial performance of the company, ensuring alignment with the vision, mission, and values. Middough provides project solutions across several industries including: Chemical, Oil & Gas, Power, Refining, Metals, Agribusiness, Food, and Advanced Manufacturing.

Rob holds a BS in Environmental Engineering from Penn State, and brings more than 20 years of experience in field and design engineering of new power generation facility installations, retrofits, business development, and EPC project negotiations. Throughout his career, he has been routinely involved in projects with capital budgets over $100M. His extensive background includes senior and international positions at Alstom Power, Babcock & Wilcox, and Doosan Babcock Energy America, LLC. Rob served as VP of the Water Environmental Assoc. of Pennsylvania and has been recognized in Metropolitan’s Who’s Who for demonstrating outstanding leadership and achievement

Dennis Buchanan, PE, is a Plant Director for Southwestern Public Service Company (SPS). SPS is one of 4 operating companies of Xcel Energy. Dennis has worked in the Electric Utility, Power Generation field for over 40 years. His background includes performance and plant engineering, project management, and senior management. A large portion of his career was dedicated to power plant process controls where he designed and implemented DCS retrofits throughout the SPS fleet. Currently, Dennis is the Plant Director of the Harrington/Nichols complex that consists of 3 coal fired units and 3 gas fired units. Dennis has a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Texas Tech University and is a Professional Engineer in the State of Texas.

Erick is the Operations Manager at Martin Lake SES in Tatum, TX. He is responsible for the operation of three coal fired units with a combined total of 2400 megawatts of generation. Erick joined Luminant in 2010 as a Production Superintendent. Before joining Luminant, Erick worked for International Paper in Alabama for 13 years. During his time there, he held various roles in maintenance and operations in Power and other areas of the Paper Mill. Erick graduated from Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama with a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1997.

Andrew S. Dobrzanski is a thirty six year veteran of the public electric utility industry. Andrew's last 10 years have been with DTE ENERGY/DTE Electric where he has held roles of: Supervisor of Engineering (Monroe Power Plant), Engineering Manager (River Rouge Power Plant) and his current role as Manager of Fuel Supply (Monroe Power Plant). Andrew's current responsibilities focus on the safe and effective operation of the Monroe Power Plant's Fuel Handling System. Monroe's Fuel Handling System is the largest coal blending facility in North America (located at a power plant) and handles 9 million tons of PRB and mid sulfur eastern coal annually. Andrew is responsible for the daily operations of the organization along with the development of strategic plans for the future of the Fuel Handling System. He also leads the technical and maintenance groups in supporting the Fuel Handling operations along with the control of the $18 million Fuel Handling budget. Andrew supports the PRB Coal Users Group by encouraging his staff to participate as speakers at the PRB Coal Users Conference and to bring back new ideas on how to improve Monroe's Fuel Handling operations in the area of safety and reliability. Andrew has been a presenter at the Electric Power Conference over the years. Currently, Andrew was lead in bring a new fuel to the Monroe Power Plant....Petroleum Coke. They are successfully blending pet coke with 100% PRB fuel. Andrew is the lead for the Fuel Systems Continuous Improvement Team, he is working towards his Yellow Belt in Lean/Six Sigma. He has set up Continuous Improvement Teams within the Operations Group, Technical and Maintenance Groups to eliminate waste, human performance errors and to bring stability to the process. Andrew also champions Employee Engagement with all of his Fuel System groups by communicating with all team members on a regular bases, setting up engagement teams that can surface issues and challenges quickly and to resolve the issues brought forth. Andrew's Gallup Engagement score is at 95%. Andrew is a member of the Company's Combustible Dust Control Team. The Team is charged with ensuring all Coal Fired Plants Fuel handling Systems have the highest standards around Combustible Dust control and mitigation to ensure that we have the safest operations possible. Prior to Andrew's DTE Energy experiences he was with FirstEnergy Corporation (Centerior Energy, Toledo Edison) for 26 years where he held numerous positions from the central design & construction engineering group, to plant maintenance engineering (turbine/generator engineer, boiler engineer, coal mill engineer), plant technical engineering (performance and reliability) and Outage Manager for the Acme, Bay Shore Power Plant and Davis Besse Nuclear Power Station. Andrew was also an active team member on the PRB conversion team for the Bay Shore Power Plant. The Plant was successfully converted to burning PRB fuels in the mid nineties. Andrew is a 1978 graduate of the University of Toledo, College of Engineering, with a degree in Mechanical Engineering Technology.

Heather has 20 years of experience in the electrical utility. She is a product of TVA's training program, beginning her career in instrumentation maintenance in one of the company's oldest coal fired plants. She has extensive experience in technical training development and currently serves as the leader for TVA's enterprise Continuous Improvement program. Under TVA's Performance Improvement umbrella, she also leads the non-nuclear Corrective Action Program, Human Performance Program, and the Operating Experience Program.

Mr. Fassett is President and founder of IEM Energy Consultants LLC, (now part of CEIS), and has more than 39 years of broad-based experience in the power and related industries. He founded IEM in 1998 as a boutique consulting practice to provide consulting services in all aspects of power plant operations, maintenance, and management to clients worldwide. Mr. Fassett has provided services in outage planning, management and oversite, long range O&M budgeting, reliability assessments, plant staffing analysis and long-term service agreement negotiations. Prior to forming IEM, Mr. Fassett held roles of increasing responsibility with various utilities, both regulated and IPP’s, as well as petrochemical process facilities. These roles included Plant Engineer, Maintenance Engineer, Start Up Manager, Maintenance Manager and Plant Superintendent. His experience includes coal, simple and combined cycle CT’s, coal gasification and specialty chemical manufacturing. Mr. Fassett sits on the Board of Directors of the Plant Managers Institute, the Advisory Board of the Electric Power Conference, is a member of the ASME Power Committee. He has taught college classes in Energy & the Environment, Ethics in the Energy Industry, Electronics and Power Plant Operations. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from North Dakota State University with an emphasis in Power Plant System Design

Melanie Green is a Sr. Director in Power Generation at CPS Energy, the municipally owned electric and gas company serving San Antonio, Texas – the nation’s 7th largest city – and surrounding region. A native of Missouri, Melanie graduated from the University of Missouri – Columbia with a BS-Mechanical Engineering. She has over 30 years experience in of power generation.

22 years in the fire protection

Mr. Grant Grothen is a Vice President of Burns & McDonnell International, a $1.5 billion USD international engineering company with decades of experience building fossil and renewable power plants around the world. Mr. Grothen has over 24 years of electric utility experience including nuclear, renewable, and fossil generation. He is currently leads the International Business Unit for Energy at Burns & McDonnell and is a notable international speaker on air quality control strategies, evolution of the renewables energy market and carbon capture & sequestration technology. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Nebraska, a Masters of Business Administration from University of Missouri Kansas City and is a registered Professional Engineer.

Ashwani Gupta is Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park and also Professor of Mechanical Engineering. He received his Ph.D. and D.Sc. from Sheffield University, UK. He has co-authored three books and over 450 technical papers and edited 10 books. He is a Fellow of AIAA, ASME, SAE, and the Institute of Energy (UK). He is the recipient of AIAA Energy Systems award, and Propellants and Combustion award, the ASME George Westinghouse Gold medal award, James Harry Potter award and James Landis award, Worcester Reed Warner award, and University of Maryland President Kirwan research award and College of Engineering research award. He has also received several best paper awards from AIAA and ASME. He is an associate editor for AIAA J. Propulsion and Power, J. Applied Energy, and co-editor of the Environmental and Energy Engineering series of books published by CRC press.

Mr. Michael Harbison is the Founder and Owner of M E H & Associates, LLC. In this capacity, he performs unit walk-downs and assessments, modifies combustion systems, reduces emissions through advanced computational modeling, assesses and tunes boilers / boiler operations. Mr. Harbison covers the full US for the power generation sector. Mr. Harbison specialized in process optimization for over twenty-five years.

Johnny Howze III serves as plant manager for Georgia Power’s Plant Scherer in Juliette. In this role, he is responsible for providing overall leadership for operations of four coal-fired units that can produce 3,600 megawatts of electricity and provide electricity to power approximately 2.6 million homes. Since joining Southern Company in 1990 as a summer student, Howze has progressed through various leadership positions, including serving as plant manager at Gulf Power’s Smith and Scholz plants, and several Georgia Power plants, including Branch, Warner Robbins and Wansley. Howze also served as assistant to the executive vice president of customer service & operations for Georgia Power. During this time, he served as a loaned executive with former Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin’s administration. He earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Alabama and completed the executive MBA program at Kennesaw State University. Throughout his career, Howze has been active in the community, with such organizations as United Way and Bay County Chamber of Commerce, and two professional organizations – the National Society of Black Engineers and the American Association of Blacks in Energy. He serves on the advisory boards of the University of Alabama’s engineering department and the school’s Paul Jones collection of African American Art.

Merrill has been involved in the fossil power generation industry for over 40 years, working for several companies specializing in Maintenances Services, Combustion Equipment, Combined Cycle Power Plants and Boiler start-up and commissioning. His area of expertise is in the boiler and balance of plant Engineering, Operation and Maintenance Services. Merrill resides in Plano, Texas and covers the southwestern United States for Day & Zimmermann. Merrill has a B.S.M.E. from the University of Massachusetts/Lowell.

Dr. Carlos E. Koeneke has worked in Rotating Equipment related field for more than 35 years. He joined Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in 1993 and worked for the Construction Department in Takasago Machinery Works in Japan. In 2001, he was transferred to Florida where he worked for the Service and Engineering Departments. Prior to his current position, he worked 7 years for Venezuela’s petroleum holding company, in the Rotating Equipment Department. Dr. Koeneke has a Ph.D in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Tokyo, and is an ASME Fellow.

Mr. Kutz has over 17 years of operations and training experience obtained from working at an Ethanol plant, Oil Refinery, Gasification plant and Power Plant. Nik was hired at the Omaha Public Power District as a Plant Helper and worked his way up to a Unit Operator. Nik jumped at the opportunity to work in the Production Operations Training Department as a Training Coordinator for the Nebraska City Station and has since moved to the Production Operations Department Training Supervisor position. Some of his many responsibilities are providing Fire Brigade training to Operations Personnel as well as creating and delivering computer based training via OPPD’s Learners Management System. He currently resides in Nebraska with his wife and two children.

Aaron Larson joined the POWER team in September 2013 as an associate editor and was named executive editor in 2017. Aaron has a bachelor’s degree in nuclear engineering technology and a master’s degree, specializing in finance. He spent 13 years in the U.S. Navy nuclear power program, advancing to Chief Petty Officer. He has worked at commercial nuclear, biomass, and coal-fired power plants, functioning in operations, maintenance, safety, financial, and management capacities. Aaron holds a Chief A Engineer boiler operator license in the state of Minnesota.

As Director – Asset Management, Greg is responsible for marketing, business development, construction, start-up and the operations of Enhanced Ammonia Desulfurization System (EADS) projects for Jiangnan Environmental Technology, Inc. With more than 30 years of experience in the power industry in regulated and unregulated businesses, both domestic and international, Greg has a diverse experience base that includes asset management, organizational change management, business development, international consulting and extensive generating plant management, operations and maintenance experience. Prior to his current position, Greg worked for AES where he focused on organizational and reliability performance improvements for AES generation businesses globally and the integration of newly acquired businesses. Greg has a mechanical engineering degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology and an MBA, with honors, from the University of Chicago where he concentrated in organizational change and strategic management.

Mark Mayworm is the Executive Director of Generation Support for Westar Energy. He is responsible for plant engineering support, reliability engineering, predictive and condition based maintenance technologies, co-owned plant and wind farm operations. Before joining Westar Energy, he spent 19 years in the coal mining industry in the Powder River Basin located in NE Wyoming. He was responsible for developing predictive maintenance programs for plant processing and shovel equipment. He is a Certified Maintenance and Reliability Professional (CMRP) with the Society for Maintenance and Reliability Professionals (SMRP).

Mr. Moran has been with Benetech since 2008, serving as Vice President. He has over 20 years of experience in profit and loss responsibility along with managing and growing various business units of large organizations. Prior to joining Benetech, he most recently served as a Vice President and General Manager for OfficeMax and Boise Cascade Corporation. Mr. Moran holds a Liberal Arts Degree from Marquette University and a MBA from the University of Chicago.

Mike is Vice President of Business Development for Zachry Engineering Corporation and has more than 30 years experience in the electric power industry with the following traits and accomplishments: •Sales force manager and leader •High energy individual •Passionate about winning •Excellent executive presentation skills •Over 30 years experience in technical sales and marketing •Demonstrated success in Telecom and Power industries •Experienced marketer of a start-up business •Winner of Sales and Customer Service Awards •Product and Services sales experience •Proven closing capabilities •Teacher of strategic analysis process •BS & MS in engineering and an MBA equivalence

Jeffrey W. Mullins, CSP -- Safety & Health Supervisor American Electric Power, James M. Gavin Plant. Jeff has worked in the power industry for 20+ years in the safety & health field. He has been at the Gavin Plant for the past 12 years. He is responsible for plant safety activities for 250+ employees & 200+ contractors daily.

Wayshalee Patel works for Sargent & Lundy, a comprehensive consulting, engineering and design firm providing solutions for the electric power industry. She is currently the Director of S&L’s Environmental Technologies, Licensing and Permitting Group. Mrs. Patel is a licensed professional engineer in the State of Illinois and has a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering and Masters in Business Administration. She directs multiple project teams, each led by project managers and technical and engineering personnel. Her overall experience encompasses environmental permitting, regulatory compliance, and air pollution controls. She is well versed in existing and proposed environmental regulations, including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). She has been involved with several air quality retrofit projects, new generation projects and transmission line projects where she assisted in project management, preliminary engineering and design, specification/procurement, and project implementation.

Michael Schimmelpfennig is a Principal Engineer for Ameren Missouri in St. Louis, Missouri. He has more than 35 years experience in the design of coal fired power plant systems with emphasis in coal handling and coal dust control. In 1995, the St. Louis Chapter of the Missouri Society of Professional Engineers named him Outstanding Engineer in Industry. Michael received his BS and MS degrees in Mining Engineering from the University of Missouri - Rolla in 1980 and 1982 respectively. He is a registered Professional Engineer in the state of Missouri and a certified Project Management Professional. He has completed numerous detailed studies associated with coal handling systems and coal dust hazards related to the utility industry, and has authored and co-authored several articles on power plant coal handling systems.

Dave has 34 years of experience in the utility industry. Of those years, 31 have been with Ameren Missouri and 3 years with Entergy (formerly Gulf States Utilities). He has been involved with Condition Based Monitoring and its predecessors for over 12 years. Dave was a contributor to EPRI PDM Guidelines Volume 2. He participated in EPRI Electric Motor and Infrared Taylor Collaboration projects, and was a past member of EPRI PDMUG and a current member of EPRI PROUG. In 2009, Dave was the recipient of EPRI Technology Transfer Award for Plant Reliability Optimization. He was also the Director when

With over 37 years of experience in the electric power industry, Bob has extensive background in fire protection, occupational safety & health, management systems, emergency preparedness and response.

Thomas Taylor is a business development manager for Zachry. Thomas is responsible for customer relationships and EPC, engineering, construction, and industrial service backlog. Thomas has an MBA from Indiana University and an electrical engineering from the University of South Carolina. His experience in the utility industry for the past 29 years includes power and industrial construction. His career began with an investor-owned utility where he managed capital projects. Since starting with Zachry 17 years ago, Thomas has held various assignments in project management, engineering, and business development.

Jon Towslee is the Sr. Director of iFactory Sales for Advantech’s Industrial IoT business unit based in Cincinnati, OH. Jon has 30+ years of automation industry experience. He has spent the last 20+ years leading, growing, and managing automation and IIoT related businesses. Jon’s experience spans many areas including commercial and industrial automation, utility and industrial power generation/transmission/distribution, HVAC systems, energy management, control and information system design and applications, and digitalization and digital transformation.   Jon earned his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from The University of Akron and his MBA from John Carroll University, where he was selected to join The Beta Gamma Sigma business honor society. He is a Registered Professional Engineer in the State of Ohio and a Certified Energy Manager by the Association of Energy Engineers.

Joe VonDerHaar has over 35 years of experience in the utility and manufacturing industries. On the utility side he has held positions in System Operations, Transmission & Distribution and Power Generation. On the manufacturing front he was a Plant Manager for a Power Transmission OEM. A common thread in both industries is the tremendous change in process and mission because of competition, new technology and evolving regulations. Being able to adapt and even welcome change is critical to success. Joe is currently the Plant Director at the Spurlock Power Station, a 4-unit, coal fired, 1500MW facility in Maysville Kentucky. He holds an engineering degree from the University of Dayton.

Jim Wiseman retired after 33 years with DTE Energy’s Monroe Power Plant as Supervisor of Plant Operations, managing the coal yard fuel handling operations. As one of the first employees at the Monroe Plant, he was on start-up teams for the original coal handling system designed and built by the McDowell Wellman Co. and for the new coal blending, ship and train unloading system that was designed and built by Bechtel Corporation. This new equipment gave Monroe Plant the ability to further enhance its ability to burn PRB coal from the original Decker Mine. The Monroe Plant was originally designed and built to burn Eastern, high-sulfur coal. The Bechtel design allowed the Monroe Plant to compliance blend three types of coal successfully. After retiring, Jim’s background, experience and knowledge are being utilized regularly by Benetech, Inc.’s Plant Professionals® Division. His own consulting business, Wiseman Consulting Services, and a business partnership, Fairbairn & Wiseman Consulting Partners, provide PRB coal handling and stockpile problem-solving advice to the Utility and Aggregate Industry. Jim presently is on the board of directors of the PRB coal users group serving as chairman of the plant of the year selection committee, and vice chairman of the suppliers committee, representing member suppliers of the PRB Coal users group.