Kenneth Wacks, PhD

Kenneth Wacks, PhD, is a leading authority in home automation and smart grid technologies, with extensive expertise in IoT, energy management, and international standards for home and building systems.

Over his extensive career, Dr. Wacks has served as a management advisor to more than 150 clients worldwide, including startups and Fortune 500 companies, helping them navigate high-tech business decisions with a focus on product development, market positioning, and strategic partnerships.

As a Hertz Fellow, Dr. Wacks earned his PhD in electrical engineering from MIT, and he later studied at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He has been instrumental in shaping international standards for home automation and smart building systems. Elected by member nations of the ISO/IEC, Dr. Wacks has chaired the international committee on home and building system standards for nine terms. He has also contributed to the creation of American National Standards in home automation, where he chairs the energy management standards committee for the Consumer Technology Association (CTA).

Dr. Wacks was appointed by the United States Department of Energy to serve four terms on the GridWise® Architecture Council, where he focused on the grid interface to customer equipment, including distributed energy resources (DER) managed by artificial intelligence. He is a founding member of the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel, now part of the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA), and chairs the Customer Grid Edge committee at the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC).

In addition to his advisory work, Dr. Wacks is a featured contributor to the CABA Journal (formerly called iHomes & Buildings) and a prolific author with more than 300 papers and presentations. He also wrote the book Home Automation and Utility Customer Services. As an entrepreneur, he developed UNIX workstations for the semiconductor industry at a venture-backed startup.