Ross Koningstein was awarded the degree of Doctor of Engineering, honoris causa, at the 2:00 p.m. ceremony on Thursday, June 15, “in recognition of his extraordinary career as engineer, entrepreneur, thoughtful leader and custodian of the planet.”
He calls himself an “engineer by day, massive low-carbon energy advocate by night.” Ross Koningstein leads Google’s Advanced Energy R&D group. He is co-author of the IEEE article, What would it really take to reverse climate change, and presented Why incremental advances are inadequate to solving climate change at the 2015 MIT LowCarbon Energy Workshop.
He previously contributed to Google’s RE<C effort to develop renewable energy sources and the design of Google’s breakthrough high-efficiency data centre in The Dalles, Oregon. He was one of the inventors of Google’s AdWords, the main revenue driver for the company.
He joined Google in 2001 as its first Director of Engineering after an entrepreneurial early career. Now an Engineering Director Emeritus, he focuses on his first love, hands-on engineering work. Outside of work, he applied his knowledge of energy systems to his home renovation and won the town’s Green Building Award. He was an executive producer of the movie Pandora’s Promise.
He is an advisory board member for the Third Way Advanced Nuclear Energy Technology Campaign in Washington, D.C. He earned a PhD in Aerospace Robotics at Stanford University and a Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Carleton University.