Hi, I’m Josh Adkins. I’m the CTO and co-founder of nLine, an infrastructure reliability monitoring company. I recently earned my PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

At nLine we work to collect data about the reliability of critical infrastructure starting with the power grid. This data can then be used to evaluate the existing equity and reliability of infrastructure, assist governments in creating policy to increase infrastructure reliability, help utilities better operate and maintain infrastructure, or evaluate and improve investments into infrastructure. I hope that some day it can also support the stories of how unreliable infrastructure impacts peoples’ lives. The work started as a collaboration with Berkeley economists to evaluate the efficacy of investments made during the Ghana Power Compact and has now grown to support projects in seven countries. nLine is intentionally not backed by venture-capital so that we can focus on our mission without external pressure to grow or increase net profits.

My PhD research focused on creating, deploying, programming, and interacting with ubiquitous sensor systems. Specifically I propose forming sensors into a computing cluster and programming them similar to how we program modern cloud infrastructure while respecting their energy, power, memory, and computational constraints. I hope these efforts can help scientists and researchers more easily collect data for and propose solutions to the world’s most pressing problems.

I am currently living in Oakland, California. During my spare time I play bass, hike and bike in the California mountains, and think about the intersection of technology, socioeconomic systems, and academia.

Updates

December 2022: I finished my PhD!

August 2022: Springer’s Introduction to Development Engineering Published.

January 2021: Utility-Independent Measurements of Electricity Reliability in Accra, Ghana accepted to IPSN ‘21

November 2020: A GridWatch chapter will be included in Springer’s Introduction to Development Engineering.

October 2020: Work on Edge Resource Management won best poster at CONIX 2020 annual review

February 2020: Browsing the Web of Connectable Things accepted to EWSN ‘20

July 2019: Unlicensed LPWANs Are Not Yet the Path to Ubiquitous Connectivity accepted to MobiCom ‘19

May 2019: Insights from Measuring Grid Reliability in Accra, Ghana accepted to COMPASS ‘19

March 2019: Won departmental outstanding GSI award for work on EECS 149/249 in Fall 2018

February 2019: Completed deployment of over 200 additional PowerWatch sensors in Accra

January 2019: Capacity over Capacitance for Reliable Energy Harvesting Sensors accepted to IPSN ‘19

December 2018: Freeloader’s Guide Through the Google Galaxy accepted to HotMobile ‘19

September 2018: Started teaching and redesigning labs for EECS 149/249 - Intro to Embedded Systems