C. Birk Jones was born and raised in Santa Fe, NM where he enjoyed spending time in the mountains, on riverbanks, and on baseball fields. He studied Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Davis and went on to work as an engineer in Boston, MA and then in Carson City, NV. As an engineer in training he helped inspect bridges, analyze trusses, and design water catchment systems for parking lots and roads. The construction process intrigued him, and he enrolled in a construction engineering master’s program at the University of New Mexico (UNM) where he learned about resource allocation, project management, and building retrofits. After completing his master’s program, he moved on to a mechanical engineering doctoral program at UNM. Working with Professor Andrea Mammoli and a local mechanical contractor he studied building systems, performed retrofit activities, and developed fault detection and diagnostic analysis tools. Today, Birk is a member of technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories where he researches photovoltaic (PV) system reliability, building system control and cybersecurity, PV controls and security, grid integration of PV and electric vehicles, and fault detection of feeder level faults. Away from work he enjoys spending time with his wife and two young boys; in the evenings or weekends he and his family take walks to the nearby Rio Grande River; they often travel to the mountains to hike, camp, and fish.