I am the Founder and CEO of Virtual Peaker. We provide the leading DER management software for utility companies.
I was the CEO of Calculingua. We provided a web application for scientists to perform statistical analysis, collaboration, and publishing.
Until 2014, I was an Advanced Systems Engineer on the GE Brillion Connected Home team, based in Louisville Kentucky at GE Appliance Park. In this role, I focused on research and development of internet-of-things and energy products. I came to GE in 2010 to work on the Nucleus home energy management platform. In May 2010 I finished my PhD in Mechanical Engineering at the University of California Berkeley. My adviser was David Auslander, and my research focused on the design and control of large scale distributed energy systems. Further, I'm a husband and father living in the Highland neighborhood of Louisville.
I am NOT the serial killer by the same name that murdered immigrants in Scotland during the early 19th century. Thought you might want to know...
News
- April 25, 2014 I gave my 2 week notice at GE in order to pursue other opportunities, including Calculingua. My last day as a GE employee will be May 9.
- April 17, 2014 I gave a 5 minute pitch for Calculingua at a Louisville Shark Tank clone called Venture Sharks. Sadly Calculingua did not advance, but you can see coverage on Insider Louisville here and here.
- February 17, 2014 Changing corporate priorities caused the Connected Home team to abandon lean startup principles. Therefore I moved back into my old role in Advanced Systems.
- January 20, 2014 I transitioned to the role of Lean Startup Leader for the GE Brillion Connected Home team. My responsibility is to help the team act like a startup by engaging customers and driving product development through customer bases metrics.
- December 3, 2013 My first patent is published -- "System and method for managing cold load pickup using demand response". The filing date was December 17, 2010.
- January 7, 2013 I released Calculingua -- a web application for scientists and engineers to perform mathematical processing. Coding is performed in the Matlab syntax and initially all of the math is performed in the browser.
- June 2012 NEMA Electro Industry published my co-authored article entitled "Residential Load Managing Products in Smart Grid".
- June 28, 2010 I started work at GE Appliance Park in Louisville Kentucky. My role is the design of advanced algorithms for the Nucleus home energy management device.
- October 14, 2009 I presented PWM Synchronization for Intelligent Agent Scarce Resource Auction at the 2009 Dynamic Systems and Controls Conference in Hollywood CA. ("Nerds in Hollywood" coming soon to a theater near you.) Check out my research page for the paper and presentation.
- December 14, 2009 I presented Price Responsive Loads -- Simulation Results to a small audience of technical people and policy makers at the California Energy Commission in Sacramento CA. The full presentation can be found (as always) on my research page.
- October 14, 2009 I presented PWM Synchronization for Intelligent Agent Scarce Resource Auction at the 2009 Dynamic Systems and Controls Conference in Hollywood CA. ("Nerds in Hollywood" coming soon to a theater near you.) Check out my research page for the paper and presentation.
- October 6, 2009 I presented Residential Electricity Auction with Uniform Pricing and Cost Constraints at the 2009 North American Power Symposium in Starkville MS. My presentation went great -- good crowd and excellent questions. Go to my research page for more info.
- September 6, 2009 I presented Low Frequency Pulse Width Modulation Design For HVAC Compressors at the 2009 ASME/IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics and Embedded Systems and Applications in San Diego CA. Check out my research page for links to the presentation and paper.
- August 10, 2009 I just un-launched my site at wjburke.com. All of that information is now here, and I set up page redirects and forwards for appropriate pages. Two websites was just too hard to manage, but I still own wjburke.com.
- August 4, 2009 Listening to the Price of Power: New Thermostats Could Save Billions -- More press for our PCT project. This time I'm mentioned by name.
- August 1, 2009 I just launched a new website for all of my professional information. Check it out at www.wjburke.com and let me know what you think.
- April 2009 Listening to the Price of Power: A New Generation of Thermostats can Save California Billions -- Starting in Jan 2006, I worked on a project to produce a proof of concept programmable communicating thermostat (PCT) for the California Energy Commission. Although this article does not mention my name, I wrote a very large portion of the PCT software.