Chris Knudsen most recently held the position of Director, Technology Innovation Center at Pacific Gas & Electric Company where he was responsible for developing new technologies to drive energy efficiency and SmartGrid evolution. Chris, chairs the Open SmartGrid Technical Committee within UCAIug and sits on the NIST SmartGrid Architecture Committee.  Prior to PG&E Chris held the position of Chief Technical Officer for Wireless Wide Area Networking Standards & Mobile Performance Labs within Intel’s Mobile Wireless Group.  In his role at Intel, Chris was responsible for: IEEE WWAN standards, WiMax technical direction, systems engineering and simulations, network architecture, mobile WiMax labs, over-the-air test and trial networks, and technical business analysis for WWAN. Previously, Chris spent three years at Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital focusing on early stage wireless investments including 802.11, 802.15, 802.16 technology, spectrum acquisition, as well as other proprietary systems and technologies. Prior to Vulcan, Chris led Metricom’s Ricochet development as Vice President of Hardware Engineering. Ricochet was the first of its kind wireless wide area meshed data network delivering data rates in excess of 200kbps/user. Metricom was also the company that developed the Utilinet AMI. He earlier founded a start-up developing energy efficient home automation system. Chris started his career designing and developing radio systems for defense electronic applications.

Chris has over 20 years of communications technology development, networking, start-up, and senior management experience. Chris is an exceptionally strong technical leader with broad experience managing diverse, multi-disciplined technical teams. Chris has both interacted and held seats on corporate Boards. He has designed, developed, and operated wireless hardware and systems ranging from a few MHz to 40 GHz. Areas of experience include wireless data networks, AMI systems, internet data, radar processing, telecommunications, wireless consumer products, and electronic intelligence systems for military applications.

Chris holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Davis and has completed work towards a Master of Technology Management at Santa Clara University.