• CERAWEEK 2025 | March 10-14, 2025
  • CERAWEEK
  • March 10 - 14, 2025

Dak Liyanearachchi

NRG Energy

Chief Data & Technology Officer

Dak Liyanearachchi serves as the Chief Data and Technology Officer. In his role, he is helping enhance NRG’s customer strategy by bringing the organization’s digital transformation to scale. Dak's teams are driving the expansion of the company’s technology, data, and analytics capabilities across the enterprise from its retail businesses to generation. This includes ensuring our operations run seamlessly with technology to innovation supporting NRG’s customer-centric strategy. Dak joined NRG from Hilton Worldwide, where he served as Chief Data & Analytics Officer. In his previous role, he drove further innovation at Hilton, building the organization’s Data & Analytics group, which expanded self-service reporting analytics capabilities across the enterprise. Further, he implemented data science and analytics-led initiatives focused on revenue management, marketing optimization, personalization, and forecasting. Prior to his time at Hilton, Dak was Chief Data & Analytics Officer at Catalina Marketing. Dak holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computing Information Systems from Birmingham City University in England.

Sessions With Dak Liyanearachchi

Wednesday, 20 March

  • 02:30pm - 03:00pm (CST) / 20/mar/2024 07:30 pm - 20/mar/2024 08:00 pm

    Digital / AI Applications in Managing Energy Demand
    Policy & Regulatory

    Reduced energy use is carbon negative. AI in principle can help enable this in both industrial and domestic settings, from control of renewables use in grids to optimization of industrial and manufacturing processes and smart lighting and heating of homes. In which demand-reduction applications can AI create the most impact? What are the barriers to implementing such solutions? How can such solutions be retrofitted into existing energy systems and how long until they can make an impact?