Each year, EPRI recognizes significant achievements across the institute with Chauncey Awards. The awards celebrate EPRI’s founder, Chauncey Starr, by recognizing the ‘best of the best’ at EPRI, showcasing innovation, impact, and service to society while embodying our vision and values.
Representing EPRI’s most prestigious honor, Chauncey Awards recognize exceptional individuals and teams within the institute for their outstanding achievements in Science and Technology, Business and Process, and Community Service.
In addition, Lifetime Achievement awards recognize employees with a lengthy track record of significant contributions to EPRI’s mission.
Join us in congratulating the latest Chauncey Award recipients!
Climate READi
Award: Climate READi
Leaders: Laura Fischer, Delavane Diaz, Jeff Thomas, Doug Dorr, Brandon Delis, Andrea Staid, Eknath Vittal, Anish Gaikwad
Key Contributors: Aguarin Iriarte, Alex Summe, Anna Lafoyiannis
Description: Promotes grid resilience by providing a transparent technical basis for evaluating and justifying electric company investments in climate adaptation.
Developed a first-of-its-kind, science-based framework for climate resilience planning.
Engaged over 100 stakeholder groups and 42 power companies.
Integrated team across all EPRI sectors
Framework is actively used for regulatory filings, asset-level assessments, and strategic planning.
Delivered measurable value and broad industry adoption. Strong global follow-on engagements are emerging.
Global Flexibility Operations Framework
Award: Global Flexibility Operations Framework
Leaders: Stephen Storm; Michael Caravaggio
Key Contributors: Grant Lanthorn; Keith Paul; Dr. Lesley Sloss
Description: Promotes affordability and reliability by providing the tools and training for thermal plant operators to support a rapidly-changing global grid.
Created a comprehensive framework and toolset for managing flexible thermal plant operations.
Adopted by 200+ companies, trained 5,000+ practitioners.
Improved grid reliability and operational flexibility by helping members make more informed decisions, leveraging the methodology and tools.
Enabled pragmatic decarbonization through enhanced dispatch flexibility.
Accelerated global knowledge transfer and industry best practices.
Nuclear Plant Operational Performance Under Future Climate
Award: Nuclear Plant Operational Performance Under Future Climate
Leaders: Rob Choromokos; Erik Smith
Key Contributors: Chris Rochon; Jonathan Lala; Jacob Mardian
Description: Promotes grid resilience through advanced assessment and guidance to address natural threats to nuclear plant operational performance.
Delivered first site-specific, forward-looking climate hazard assessments for nuclear power plants.
Enabled compliance, improved safety, and positioned EPRI as a leader in climate resilience for the nuclear industry.
Provided actionable, site-specific guidance for assessing and improving resilience.
Supported industry-wide adoption and global engagement.
Only possible due to strong individual commitment to effective cross-sector collaboration
Affordable Decarbonization of Multi-Family Communities
Award: Affordable Decarbonization of Multi-Family Communities
Leaders: Ben Clarin; Herberto Yaptinchay
Key Contributors: Mazen Daher; Andra Rogers; Erin Jones
Description: Demonstrates energy affordability, community equity and building resiliency through implementation of emerging technologies that make multi-family electrification scalable.
Demonstrated scalable, equitable decarbonization strategies for low-income multifamily housing.
Delivered cost savings, improved quality of life, and influenced policy/building codes.
Pioneered large-scale field demonstrations of emerging building technologies.
Developed best practices and secured further research funding.
Through team contributions overcame significant challenges with executing a public-facing project during COVID pandemic.
Improved Battery Energy Storage Safety
Award: Improved Battery Energy Storage Safety
Leaders: Lakshmi Srinivasan; Stephanie Shaw
Key Contributors: Eula Billaut; Joe Thompson; Haresh Kamath
Description: Quantitatively improved safety outcomes, supporting the rapidly expanding deployment of utility-scale batteries.
Contributed to setting the global standard for safe energy storage deployment.
Developed leading practices, databases, and training for BESS safety.
Contributed to a 98% drop in major BESS failures.
Informed codes, standards, and effective emergency response.
eRoadmap
Award: eRoadmap
Leaders: Britta Gross; Jamie Dunckley.
Key Contributors: Jeremiah Deboever; Elizabeth Hunt; Alison O'Connell
Description: Supports proactive and cost-effective grid planning and decarbonization by providing public, online maps that overlay grid capacity and transport electrification demand.
Created a public mapping tool integrating private and public data for EV grid impacts.
Overcame major data-sharing and trust barriers with a diverse group of non-traditional EPRI stakeholders.
Widely adopted for utility and fleet planning; cited in regulatory proceedings.
Aggregates real-world fleet and utility data, shaping policy and investment decisions.
Visionary leadership and exceptional rapid delivery (launched in under 12 months).
Geomagnetic Induced Currents Harmonic Assessment Framework
Award: Geomagnetic Induced Currents Harmonic Assessment Framework
Leaders: Bob Arritt; Andres Ovalle
Description: Promotes grid resilience by providing a cutting-edge software solution to address a new regulatory requirement.
Developed the first publicly available tool for wide-area harmonic load flow analysis driven by geomagnetic disturbances (GMD).
Filled a decades-long industry gap. Through external engagement & open-source software approach, the tool is now integrated with commercial platforms for broad adoption and impact.
Enables utilities to assess and mitigate GMD risks, supporting regulatory compliance and grid resilience.
Recognized by NERC and FERC; cornerstone for national grid resilience planning.
Lifetime Achievement
Lifetime Achievement: Carl Latiolais (EPRI Charlotte Office)
Accomplishment: Extraordinary Contributions to EPRI and the Industry
Description: For more than three decades, Carl Latiolais has made extraordinary and lasting contributions to EPRI and the global nuclear industry through his leadership in nondestructive evaluation (NDE) performance demonstration and his unwavering commitment to nuclear safety, reliability, and technical integrity. Since joining EPRI in 1994, Carl has served as the Performance Demonstration (PD) Lead, guiding the program through continuous growth, increasing technical complexity, and expanding regulatory requirements. Under his leadership, the PD program has consistently met mandatory ASME Code requirements while adapting to expanding scopes of qualified components. Carl’s career is deeply intertwined with the evolution of industry performance demonstration itself. Through EPRI’s leadership role in early qualification programs and subsequent implementation of ASME Appendix VIII requirements, Carl became a central figure in translating regulatory intent into a unified, technically sound, and auditable qualification infrastructure. One of Carl’s most enduring technical legacies is the development and continual improvement of realistic mockups used for performance demonstration. These mockups are foundational to demonstrating inspection reliability, detection capability, and sizing accuracy. Equally important is how Carl approached this work. He led with impeccable integrity, maintaining an open and transparent development process—sharing progress, results, and lessons learned with utilities and regulators in real time. Carl’s leadership, expertise, and technical vision have made him one of the industry’s most essential resources for ensuring nuclear safety and sustained plant operability. Carl Latiolais’s lifetime of service has shaped not only programs and technologies, but the very standards by which NDE performance is judged worldwide.
Community Service
Beth McRimmon (EPRI Charlotte Office
Accomplishment: Service and Mentorship to local and International Impoverished Communities.
Description: Beth McRimmon has demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to serving underserved communities locally and internationally through sustained, hands-on service and leadership. Over the past five years, Beth has led and participated in multiple mission efforts in Nicaragua and Honduras, partnering with organizations to deliver essential resources such as hygiene items, school supplies, food, and infrastructure support to vulnerable children and families. Through these efforts, internationally and locally, Beth has helped strengthen community stability and dignity by supporting children/adults/families impacted by poverty, abuse, and homelessness. She has not only contributed personal time and financial resources, but also mobilized others through thoughtful fundraising, logistics coordination, and long-term relationship-building with partner organizations. Beth’s consistent, sacrificial service of time, energy, and personal resources reflects a deep-rooted purpose and passion for helping others and a life lived in pursuit of meaningful impact.
Paulo Radatz (EPRI Knoxville Office)
Accomplishment: Advance Modeling Knowledge and Understanding for the Global Power Distribution System Engineering Community through OpenDSS Education and Tools.
Description: Paulo Radatz has committed more than a decade to expanding access to high-quality power systems education for students, educators, system engineers, and researchers around the world. Through freely available OpenDSS video tutorials and open-source tools, Paulo has directly influenced improved operational practices, more efficient interconnection of renewables, and deeper industry-academia collaboration, amplifying the community’s modeling capability at global scale. Through this effort, Paulo has empowered a global community of students, professors, utilities, and researchers to better understand and apply OpenDSS for real-world grid planning and analysis. His bilingual, on-demand educational content has been widely adopted in university classrooms and professional settings, significantly lowering barriers to entry and accelerating learning. Paulo has further strengthened this impact by developing and maintaining open-source tools that integrate OpenDSS with modern programming workflows, equipping learners with reproducible, industry-relevant skills. His sustained, volunteer-driven contributions continue to enhance energy education and modeling capability at a global scale.