Dr. Alex Papalexopoulos (F' 2001) is the President & CEO of ECCO International, based in San Francisco, California, which provides consulting and software services in the areas of energy market design and implementation, market and system operations and planning, smart grid and renewable energy, energy market analysis, revenue and investment analysis, renewable integration and transmission and distribution system reliability analysis to a wide range of clients such as Governments, Regulators, ISOs/RTOs/TSOs/PXs, Utilities, Generators and Traders. Over the last 25 years Alex has designed and implemented organized energy markets in about 15 countries in North and South America, Western and Eastern Europe and Asia. He is also CEO and Chairman of the Board of ZOME Energy networks, an energy software company which implements Energy Management Programs for the mass residential and commercial building market. These Programs are based on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, stochastic distributed control and Blockchain technologies. Dr. Alex Papalexopoulos is on the advisory board of several high tech companies, has made substantial contributions in the areas of energy market design, transmission analysis, network grid optimization, transmission pricing and real time control functions, is a sought-after industry leader and IEEE distinguished speaker, and has published hundreds of papers in refereed scientific journals. He is the 1992 recipient of PG&E's Wall of Fame Award, the 1996 recipient of IEEE’s First Prize Paper Award and a Fellow of IEEE. Alex received the Electrical and Mechanical Engineering Diploma from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US. In 2016 he was bestowed the award of the honorary Professor at the University of Patras, Greece.