Dr. Taft is a Cisco Distinguished Engineer and is the Chief Architect for the Cisco Connected Grid Business Unit.

As the CG Chief Architect, he is responsible for development of the Cisco Connected Grid Architecture for end to end converged communications in smart grid and electric power delivery chains. He participates in the definition of Cisco connected grid strategy development, and collaborates with other CG staff to integrate the technical architecture with business architecture, product development, ecosystem elements, and market strategies. He also participates in relevant standards activities and supports Cisco business development and client engagement teams on selected technical issues.

Dr. Taft is a veteran of the energy and technology sectors with over 25 years experience in his field. He began working in the smart grid area exclusively in 2001 and before coming to Cisco, held smart grid chief architect roles with Accenture and IBM. In those roles he developed architectures for smart grid data management, analytics, and system integration based on experience in building smart grid solutions for several electric utilities. Jeffrey formerly worked for Westinghouse and consulted for HICO in the power equipment field, and also has experience in industrial automation, medical imaging, signal processing, and control systems. While at Westinghouse, he led the development of a reference architecture for modular machine vision and sensory systems for industrial applications.

Dr. Taft has extensive experience in the areas of smart grid data management, analytics, visualization of grid information, integration, and distributed processing architectures. He has worked on several key smart grid projects since he first began to develop sensor architectures and analytics for distribution grids. As the field progressed, he became involved in the larger issues of at-scale smart grid system structure, including data and analytics aggregation, control federation and disaggregation, and observability strategy. He is the holder of 13 patents and has published and presented numerous papers and articles on smart grid architecture over the last several years.

Jeffrey received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh in 1986 while working at Westinghouse, with a dual specialization in digital signal processing and digital control. He is a member of the IEEE Power and Energy Society, the IEEE Signal Processing Society, and CIGRE.

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