Jon White is the acting director of NREL’s Energy Security and Resilience program office. In this role, White leads labwide coordination of the Energy Security and Resilience program and capabilities investment, including investments in facilities and equipment, staff, and new processes. He oversees the creation and accountability of an institutional development plan to accelerate the growth and impact of the labwide Energy Security and Resilience research portfolio.

Previously, White led NREL’s Cybersecurity program office and provided strategic direction in building the lab’s cybersecurity research portfolio in alignment with capability investments. He coordinated programmatic relationships with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Department of State, and the private sector and served as laboratory program manager to the DOE Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergency Response. White also managed NREL’s former Secure Cyber-Energy Systems research group within the Energy Security and Resilience Center.

Prior to joining NREL, White spent over a decade performing research in wind turbine physical damage monitoring and wind plant control systems at Sandia National Laboratories.

Research Interests

Energy control systems cybersecurity

Cyber resilience of autonomous systems

Complex system of systems security

Hazard evaluation and failure analysis

Structural health monitoring

Theoretical and experimental structural dynamics

Control systems

Education

Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University

M.S., Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University

B.S., Mechanical Engineering, The Ohio State University