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Cable Tech: Our Faculty
WPI and Dow's online courses in Cables are taught by industry experts. Here are the instructors for our six available courses, now enrolling!
S. “Ram” Ramachandran
Cable Tech 101: Cables Overview
Mr. Ramachandran is a retired Global Marketing Director at Dow Chemical Company, having led the Wire and Cable Group’s interface with electric utility principals across the globe. He spent the last half of his 40 - year career engaging the electric utility industry in promoting the awareness and importance of performance enhanced materials for underground low, medium and high voltage cables.
During his tenure, Ram and his dedicated group was extensively involved in dialog with electric utility engineers across the utility industry. In North America, be it IOUs, Cooperatives or Munis, the focus was in understanding the key challenges for the utilities in delivering 24/7 power to their customers at optimum costs. This helped Dow to maintain its market leading position in offering technologically advanced underground cable material components, ensuring long life cables.
Prior to his marketing assignments, Ram had broad experience in product and process development in wire and cable, specialty gas technology and metals and materials. He has a Masters in Materials Engineering from Columbia University, New York and an MBA from SUNY.
Ram is a Senior Member of IEEE and has been a member of CIGRE and CIRED.
Ram has been active in Insulated Conductors Committee of IEEE, having chaired their Power Cable Standards Group for eight years. He also led an ICC industry task force of eight members made up of utility engineers, cable and accessory manufacturers, materials suppliers and test agencies.
Ram has several patents and papers to his credit. Many of his papers and presentations are on power cable materials.
Randy Szilagyi
Cable Tech 102: Low Voltage Cables 
Randy graduated from the University of Saskatchewan in 1982 with bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. He has worked in various industries such as power generation and the telecommunications industry in the areas of telephone and fiber optic cable manufacturing.
For the last 30 years he has been working for Nexans Energy in the area of power cable manufacturing. Early on, he was responsible for process engineering and quality assurance at a power cable manufacturing plant in Weyburn, Saskatchewan. More recently he has been
Applications Engineering Manager for Nexans' customer base in North America. His expertise covers a wide range of power cable products from low and medium voltage overhead and underground products to bare overhead medium and high voltage cables.
In his role as Applications Engineering Manager since 2005, Randy has been participating in numerous cable standards organizations such as CSA, UL, and the Insulated Cable Engineers Association (ICEA), where he served as Vice President of the Energy division from 2014 - 2017. At ICEA, Randy was past chairman of two power cable ANSI/ICEA standards: T-28-562 “Test Method for Measurement of Hot Creep for Polymeric Insulation” and P-117-734 “Ampacities for Single Conductor Solid Dielectric Power Cable 15 kV through 35 kV." He is also active in several working groups at the IEEE Insulated Conductors Committee (ICC).
Joseph W. McAuliffe
Cable Tech 103: Medium Voltage Cables
Joe joined Southwire Company in 2007 with approximately 34 years in the Electric Utility Industry in his capacity he as Senior Product Engineer in the Energy Division Technical Group, and is a registered Professional Engineer. Joe retired in early 2018.
Principal areas of experience include cable and accessory design, application, installation and operation of Medium Voltage Overhead and Underground Cables and Systems. Joe also has extensive experience with 600 volt cables and bare wire conductor constructions.
Previous experience included National Technical Rep and Northeastern Regional Manager for Rainbow Technology, supplying chemicals to T&D Utilities. Joe also served in several positions at Hendrix Wire & Cable, including Engineering Manager, Product & Marketing Manager, and Applications Engineer. In addition, Joe was also Chief Engineer and Operations Engineer for two municipal electric utilities.
Joe has co-authored two IEEE Technical Conference papers: “Design and Application of Aerial Systems using Insulated and Covered Wire and Cable” and “Safety Considerations of Aerial Systems using Insulated and covered Wire & Cable." Both papers were presented at the 1996 IEEE Transmission and Distribution Conference in Los Angeles, CA
Joe was also a member of the United States Naval Air Reserve for 27 years. Joe preformed various managerial and operational functions in two antisubmarine helicopter squadrons and a C-130 transport squadron during this time. He retired as a Chief Petty Officer.
John T. Smith, III
Cable Tech 104: Medium Voltage Cable Manufacture
John graduated from Prairie View A & M University, Prairie View, Texas, in 1970 and 1973, respectively, with a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Chemistry. He worked for the Dow Chemical Company, Freeport, Texas, in Product/Process Development of engineering thermoplastics, polycarbonates. In 1979, he moved to the BASF Wyandotte Corporation in Wyandotte, Michigan, developing laundry and cleaning products for the restaurant, hotel, hospital, nursing homes, and food processing industries.
John worked in the wire and cable industry for 35 years, starting in 1980 at Alcoa Conductor Products Company (ACPC), Marshall, Texas, a division of Alcoa, developing and selecting materials for low, medium, and high voltage electrical power cables. He also managed materials manufacturing plants for low and medium voltage insulation and jacketing materials. He managed customer service activities (in-service cable field failures, materials processing issues at cable manufacturing plants) while located at the Indianapolis Technology Center, Indianapolis, Indiana. He managed R&D activities (accelerated cable life testing, materials qualifications, field-failure analysis of cable products) at the Marshall Technology Center under the ownership of Conductor Products, Inc., Lawrence Industries (1985-1989), and BICC Cables and General Cable Corporation from 1996-2015.
He served as statistical consultant to the Insulated Cables Engineers Association (ICEA) from 1999 - 2003, establishing minimum requirements for electrical performance of cables in qualification test protocols for medium voltage cable standards, S-94-649 and S-97-682.
John is a Life Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), a member of its Power & Energy Society (PES) and Standards Association (IEEE-SA). He served in the Insulated Conductors Technical Committee (ICC) of the PES as a member, Chair and Vice-Chair of numerous working and discussion groups, and Subcommittee A, leading to the development of IEEE standards and documents. He served as Vice-Chair, Chair and Past-Chair of the ICC technical committee between 2007 – 2015. He also served as a technical Vice-Chairman of the International Conference on Cables called JiCable, held every four years in Versailles, France. He is a past member of Cigre-North America, and the author or co-author of several technical papers and articles published in the IEEE Journal on Power Delivery, Electrical Insulation Magazine, and numerous presentations at ICC meetings.
Bill Taylor
Cable Tech 105: Medium Voltage Cable Accessories
Bill graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a BSEE degree in 1975. He has over 40 years of experience in the power industry. He spent over 13 years as a field electrical engineer in the PetroChem industry, designing and installing power systems from low voltage up to and including a 138 kV substation. He went to work for 3M and spent almost 27 years as a product development/technical service engineer developing cable accessories for cables from 1000 -138,000 volts. He has been retired since 2015, but is still very active in the IEEE. He attends all IEEE/PES/ICC meetings and is presently the chairman of the revisions to IEEE-48 standard, which is the termination standard. He is also chairman of P1637 revisions, which is the termination selection and application guide. Bill was also vice chairman and chairman of the ICC from 2002 through 2005. Bill is considered an expert in the industry and is still regularly consulted with technical questions.
Rachel Mosier
Cable Tech 107: High Voltage / Extra High Cables
Rachel I. Mosier received a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering from the University of Connecticut in 1992, and a Master of Science degree in Power Systems Management from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 2010.
In 1995, Ms. Mosier joined New England’s largest utility system – Northeast Utilities Service Company (now Eversource). In the Distribution Construction and Material Standards department, Ms. Mosier performed engineering assignments related to the design, construction, and operation of the underground distribution systems. When Northeast Utilities embarked on the longest underground transmission cable project of extra high-voltage extruded-dielectric cable in the Western Hemisphere, Ms. Mosier joined the Transmission Engineering department as the company’s underground cable system specialist.
Ms. Mosier joined Power Delivery Consultants, Inc., in 2006, where she continues to specialize in underground cable system design, specifications, installation, and operation and maintenance. Ms. Mosier was solely responsible for the whole-book technical review of the EPRI Transmission Systems Reference Book, 2006 edition. She is responsible for engineering analysis, specifications, and bid review for underground cable projects.
Ms. Mosier is the Past Chair of the IEEE Power & Energy Society’s Insulated Conductor Committee (ICC), serving from 2008-2011, as well as past chair of the ICC Education Session. She also chaired Working Group F12W, “Guide for Fault Locating on Shielded Power Cables." She was the U.S. Invited Expert on the CIGRÉ Working Group B1.50 “SVL and Bonding Systems (Design, Testing, Operation, and Monitoring)” and an active member of CIGRÉ working groups B1.57 “Update of Service Experience of HV Underground and Submarine Cable Systems” and B1.76 “Increasing the Role of Quality Assurance and Quality Control to Reduce Cable Failure Possibility”.
Ms. Mosier is a Senior Member of the IEEE, its Power & Energy Society and Standards Association, and author of several technical articles. While at Northeast Utilities, Ms. Mosier was a utility advisor on several EPRI projects and a member of the AEIC Cable Engineering Committee participating in development of AEIC CS9, Specification for XLPE-insulated cables up to 345 kV.
Ms. Mosier is a registered Professional Engineer in the states of Connecticut, New York, Texas, Ohio, Virginia, Rhode Island, and Florida.