Gary Marks is co-founder and CEO of iP Solu­tions Corp.  He is also a co-founder and CTO of a partially-owned sub­sidiary of iP Solu­tions, Iris Con­nec­tion, Inc., a provider of water man­age­ment tech­nol­ogy with an empha­sis on the Water-Energy Nexus.  Mr. Marks man­aged the devel­op­ment of Iris Connection’s prod­uct line, which addresses pub­lic water sys­tem man­age­ment as well as agri­cul­tural irri­ga­tion man­age­ment, includ­ing pump con­trols and remote envi­ron­men­tal monitoring.

Mr. Marks has authored sev­eral papers on elec­tri­cal energy con­sump­tion, energy effi­ciency and demand response in Cal­i­for­nia indus­trial, agri­cul­tural, and water appli­ca­tions.  His most recent, “Oppor­tu­ni­ties for Demand Response in Cal­i­for­nia Agri­cul­tural Irri­ga­tion: A Scop­ing Study”, was con­tracted by the Demand Response Research Cen­ter (DRRC) for the Pub­lic Inter­est Energy Research (PIER) pro­gram of the Cal­i­for­nia Energy Com­mis­sion (CEC).  Fur­ther, Mr. Marks pre­sented the topic of “Oppor­tu­ni­ties for Demand Response in Cal­i­for­nia Agri­cul­tural Irri­ga­tion” at the Emerg­ing Tech­nol­ogy Sum­mit for energy tech­nol­ogy com­pa­nies and elec­tric util­i­ties in Pasadena, CA on Octo­ber 16^th, 2012.  In 2010, Mr. Marks authored a paper on Pre­ci­sion Irri­ga­tion that dealt with water and energy effi­ciency as well as demand response in Cal­i­for­nia agri­cul­tural irri­ga­tion.  Mr. Marks is a mem­ber of the Demand Response Research Cen­ter Indus­trial Con­trols Experts Work­ing Group and as a mem­ber of that group con­sulted on another DRRC pub­li­ca­tion, “Assess­ing the Con­trol Sys­tems Capac­ity for Demand Response in Cal­i­for­nia Indus­tries”.

Through iP Solu­tions Mr. Marks con­tin­ues to work on pump con­trol tech­nol­ogy and remote envi­ron­men­tal mon­i­tor­ing.  Cur­rently, iP Solu­tions is col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Bio­me­te­o­rol­ogy and Atmos­pheric Sci­ence depart­ments of U.C. Davis on a frost con­di­tion mon­i­tor­ing and pro­tec­tion sys­tem.  Addi­tion­ally, as part of his ongo­ing efforts and inter­est in demand response, Mr. Marks has estab­lished iP Solu­tions as a mem­ber of the Open ADR Alliance.

Mr. Marks devel­oped most of the soft­ware and firmware for iP Solu­tions’ var­i­ous embed­ded sys­tems projects.  He cur­rently spe­cial­izes in embed­ded Linux includ­ing ker­nel, dri­ver and appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment.  See Chem­i­cal and Radi­a­tion Threat Detec­tion, SPI Command-line Util­ity for Rasp­berry Pi, and Weather Data Mon­i­tor­ing and Alert Sys­tem.

Hav­ing spent much of his career in Sil­i­con Valley’s main­stream, Mr. Marks’ career spanned the semi­con­duc­tor indus­try and asso­ci­ated Auto­matic Test Equip­ment (ATE), Elec­tronic Design Automa­tion (EDA) soft­ware, and embed­ded sys­tem design.  He founded sev­eral tech­nol­ogy start-ups, and presided over two of them.

Mr. Marks holds a dou­ble major B.S. in Elec­tri­cal Engi­neer­ing & Com­puter Sci­ence and Mate­ri­als Sci­ence Engi­neer­ing from U.C. Berke­ley and a Master’s degree in Solid-State Elec­tron­ics from U.C. Berkeley.