Dr. Richard O'Neill currently serves as a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E). Prior to his time at ARPA-E, O’Neill served as the Chief Economic Advisor at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and as the Director of FERC’s Office of Pipeline and Producer Regulation.  During his time at FERC, O’Neill led the Chairman’s teams to develop policy and restructure the natural gas and the electric power markets, develop oil-pipeline rate index by benchmarking to actual industry costs, and increase the efficiency of FERC’s market software. Further, O’Neill led a group that developed transmission switching software that would ultimately become an ARPA-E project and was integral to the initial design of ARPA-E’s Grid Optimization Competition.

O’Neill has served on the computer science and business faculties at Louisiana State University and the University of Maryland, where he holds a B.S. in chemical engineering, an MBA, and a Doctorate in operations research.