| George Gela, Ph.D., P.Eng., is an Adjunct Professor at the Western New England University where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in electric power systems, power electronics and renewable power. He also serves as Vice President of Engineering at Omadatech and CatalystAviation, two successful start-up companies, where he is responsible for engineering work related to aerial inspection and condition assessment of transmission towers and other structures. Prior to joining WNE, he devoted 24 years to research and testing in the areas of live-line maintenance, high-voltage AC and DC, corona, manhole events, line inspection, and lightning and switching impulse testing at the EPRI-Lenox High Voltage Laboratory in Lenox, MA, which was initially built by GE in 1958 on donated to EPRI in 1986. He also taught graduate and undergraduate courses in electrical engineering at The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, and worked as a researcher at Trench Electric, manufacturer of high-voltage equipment in Toronto, Canada. George obtained B.A. Sc., M.A. Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is a Member of IEEE and CIGRÉ, and has served as International Chairman of Technical Committee 78 “Live working” of the IEC since 1995. |