Ray Klump, PhD

Ray Klump earned a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in August 2000.

His dissertation, “A Computational Framework for Assessing Voltage Security Using Energy Methods,” developed an algorithm for predicting the maximum amount of power an electric utility system can serve before a blackout occurs. From May 1996, through August 1998, he worked as General Engineer at Mid-America Interconnected Network in Lombard, IL, where he developed a software platform for calculating maximum power system transfer capabilities and posting these numbers to a secure website used by marketing and reliability firms. Starting in October 1997, Dr. Klump began working for PowerWorld Corporation, a software manufacturer based in Champaign, IL. Working first on a part-time basis and then in a full-time capacity, Dr. Klump wrote software for calculating and displaying the conditions of an electric power system in ways that help system operators and engineers understand the system much more easily than they could if they used only tables and graphs. Dr. Klump continues to work part-time as Software Engineer and Senior consultant for PowerWorld, where he is the principle developer of PowerWorld’s Retriever product, which displays the real-time measurements of an electric power system as reported by phasor measurement units and SCADA systems.

Dr. Klump began his career at Lewis University in August 2001. He has taught undergraduate courses in C++, Java, software engineering, database design and implementation, artificial intelligence, computer graphics, microcomputer software applications, and college mathematics. Dr. Klump has published 18 papers, mostly in the field of computer applications for power systems. He has consulted, through PowerWorld, for projects with Commonwealth Edison, City Water Light and Power of Springfield, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Bonneville Power Administration, Southern Company, Entergy, Mid-America Interconnected Network, and PJM.

Professional and Educational Interests:
Electric power systems
Stability of nonlinear networks
Numerical methods
Programming languages
Scientific visualization
Object-oriented theory and design
Security of information systems

Credentials:
B.S., Electrical Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1993
M.S., Electrical Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1995
Ph.D., Electrical Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2000

Celebration of Scholarship Mentor:
Using CUDA
Undergraduate Student Project in Math & Science

Honors:

Grant from Lewis University Computer Ethics Simulation, Mozilla Foundation