John Hall completed his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Missouri University of Science and Technology, where he was recognized as a General Motors Scholar and an ASME International Gas Turbine Institute Scholar.  He subsequently worked in industry in the power generation, automotive, robotics, and semiconductor fields.  Dr. Hall held senior level positions in design, manufacturing, maintenance, and reliability engineering and is a licensed professional engineer. He has provided engineering consultation for GEC-Alstom Electric, TECO-Westinghouse, Lockheed Martin, Advanced Micro Devices, Hewlett Packard, and IBM.  While working in industry he completed master's and doctoral degrees in mechanical engineering at The University of Texas at Austin and was awarded the Cockrell College of Engineering Fellowship.  His research has involved sonar development for the United States (U.S.) Navy, an intelligent actuator for the U.S. Navy “All Electric Ship” program, demilitarization of M42 grenades for the U.S. Army, novel wind turbine design, and adaptive aerostructures for wind energy and aircraft. At the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, his work concentrates on design and control techniques for renewable energy systems.  To study these systems, Dr. Hall also focuses on simulation modeling of time-dependent multidisciplinary phenomena.  Key aspects of this work are system scalability, upgradability, maintenance, reliability, and lifecycle analysis.