It is with a heavy heart that we inform you that Dr. Robert Thomas, a long time HICSS leader, passed away unexpectedly on Sunday, October 9, 2022, in his home in Florida. Earlier that weekend he was with his extended family at an event celebrating his 80th Birthday. Bob was a true leader, dedicated to serving many including those of us in the HICSS community. Bob’s involvement in HICSS leadership dates back to 1996 when he, working with Ralph Sprague, created what is now known as the HICSS Electric Energy Track. Bob was the sole track chair for 14 years, and then spent another six years as track co-Chair, stepping down after HICSS 50.
After receiving his doctoral degree from Wayne State University in 1973, Bob joined the School of Electrical Engineering at Cornell University during the height of the OPEC energy crisis and became a pillar of power system research at Cornell for over three decades until his retirement in 2009. His expertise lies in power system stability, control of large systems, and economic and institutional impacts of deregulation. Bob authored over 100 technical papers in leading journals and conferences during his career. A Life Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), he received Centennial and Millennium medals, the IEEE Power and Energy Society Outstanding Power Engineering Award, and multiple teaching awards at Cornell.
Bob’s research vision and contributions go beyond publications in academic journals and the confine of an Ivy League institution. He was the first Program Director of the National Science Foundation in power systems, the Vice President of the IEEE-USA for Technology Policy, a founding member of the Coalition for Electric Reliability Solutions (CERTS), and a member of the US Department of Energy Secretary’s Electricity Advisory Committee. As a member of the US Department of Energy Investigation Team, Bob contributed to understanding the 2003 Northeast Blackout, the largest blackout in US history at the time.
In 1996, Bob became the founding director of PSERC (Power Systems Engineering Research Center), a 13-university National Science Foundation Industry-University Cooperative Research Center. Thanks to his leadership as the center director in the first ten years, PSERC is now a thriving university, industry, and government research consortium, addressing pressing challenges in the continuing power and energy system transformation. At this time Bob also began his long involvement in HICSS leadership.
To his students, colleagues, and friends, Bob had been a constant source of wisdom, support, and encouragement, always generous with his time. He had an outgoing and warm personality with a beautiful sense of humor. Boating on Cayuga Lake was one of his favorite pastimes. He was an engineer with exceptional hands-on skills and craftsmanship. True to his profession, Bob built from scratch a home energy management system that allowed him to monitor and control remotely from his home in Florida the DERs in his lake house in New York, which included solar panels on his roof, a power wall in his basement, and a geothermal system underneath his front yard.