Event
Past, Present and Future Regulation of Energy and Data Centers
Friday, November 20, 2026
2:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m.
Van Munching Hall #1333
Catherine Stephens
301 405 9378
csteph5@umd.edu
http://energy.umd.edu
Smith School Seminar - Dr. Richard O'Neill
Dr. Richard P. O’Neill served for more than three decades at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, where he directed the Office of Pipeline and Producer Regulation, served as Chief Economist and Director of the Office of Economic Policy, and later as Chief Economic Advisor. At FERC he led the Chairman’s teams that developed policy for restructuring the natural gas and electric power markets, developed the oil-pipeline rate index benchmarked to actual industry costs, and improved the efficiency of FERC’s market software. His group’s work on transmission switching software became an ARPA-E project and shaped the design of ARPA-E’s Grid Optimization Competition, which he later led as a Distinguished Senior Fellow and Program Director after joining ARPA-E in 2019. Earlier in his career he taught at the University of Maryland and Louisiana State University and directed oil and gas analysis at the Energy Information Administration. He is a Fellow of INFORMS and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2022 for leadership and contributions to the liberalization and design of efficient natural gas and electric power markets. He holds a B.S. in chemical engineering, an MBA, and a Ph.D. in operations research, all from the University of Maryland.
In person or via zoom:
https://umd.zoom.us/j/
