Kristi Anseth is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and distinguished professor of chemical and biological engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her research interests lie at the interface between biology and engineering where she designs new biomaterials for applications in drug delivery and regenerative medicine. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine.
Billy Bardin is the global operations technology director at the The Dow Chemical Company. His research interests are development of technology for improved energy utilization, increased raw material conversion efficiency, alternative feedstocks/renewable materials, and carbon footprint management; applied process and catalysis technology within manufacturing facilities; longer range R&D; and hydrocarbon conversions, partial oxidation reactions, acid catalysis, alkane activation, and high throughput research.
Jason Burdick is a professor of bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on developing and understanding clinically useful polymeric biomaterials for applications in drug delivery and tissue regeneration. His technology includes high-throughput assessment techniques, injectable materials, nanofibrous scaffolds, nanocomposites, and materials that spatially and temporally control stem cell behavior.
Karen Christman is an associate professor of bioengineering at the University of California, San Diego. She develops novel biomaterials for tissue engineering
and regenerative medicine applications. Projects include materials for in vitro differentiation of stem cells to injectable biomaterials for tissue repair. Her lab has a strong translational focus with the main goal of developing novel minimally invasive therapies for cardiovascular disease.
Claus Daniel is the deputy director of the Sustainable Transportation Program at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. His work involves materials processing and characterization development for advanced energy storage systems. He has expertise in thin film structures, mechanical and functional properties, surface processing, and laser treatment. His research has been focused on laser-material interaction, non-destructive materials analysis, and microstructure analysis, as well as functional materials for industrial and biomedical use, energy storage, and energy conversion.
Brian Gerkey is the chief executive officer of Open Source Robotics Foundation. He builds open source software tools and libraries that enable robotics research, education, and application development. To enhance and support this software, he establishes and fosters open source developer and user communities.
Kelvin Gregory is an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. His research interests include microbiology and biotechnology, benthic and microbial fuel-cells for remote and decentralized power generation, environmental biogeochemistry, electrode-based remediation of contaminated subsurfaces, bacteriology and microbial ecology of engineered systems, and sustainable and appropriate technology in developing communities.
Dennis Hong is a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles where his research is in robot locomotion and manipulation, autonomous vehicles, and humanoid robots.
Stephen Ingram is the director of business development for the Gulf of Mexico at Halliburton. His primary interests are hydraulic fracturing, proppant diagenesis, sustainable conductivity, nodal analysis, effective drilling practices, contracts, deepwater drilling, and completions.
Christopher Jones is the associate vice president for research and New-Vision Professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology where his research is in the broad areas of materials design and synthesis, catalysis, and adsorption. Specific emphases are placed on design and understanding of molecular catalysts and catalytic materials for energy applications, fine chemical and pharmaceutical applications, and on adsorbents for CO2 capture.
Carmel Majidi is an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. His interests are in multifunctional materials, soft-matter electronics, and soft machines for assistive wearable technologies and biologically inspired robotics.
Arunava Majumdar is the Jay Precourt Professor and Senior Fellow, Precourt Institute for Energy, at Stanford University. His research includes the science and engineering of nanoscale materials and devices as well as large engineered systems. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering.
Alvaro Masias is a research engineer in energy storage research and strategy at the Ford Motor Company. His primary research is in batteries for transportation, focusing on safety, testing, and materials.
Shirley Meng is an associate professor of nanoengineering at the University of California, San Diego. Her work focuses on the field of energy storage and conversion materials: nano-structured electrodes for advanced rechargeable batteries, dye-sensitized solar cells and thermoelectric conversion; charge ordering, structure stability, processing structure-property performance relations in functional ceramics; and combining first principles computation with high-skill experiments for rational materials design and optimization for energy applications.
W. David Merryman is an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Vanderbilt University. His research is focused on cardiovascular mechanobiology with emphasis on cellular response and functional changes to altered mechanical stimuli and various biochemical agents. Areas of expertise include cellular and soft tissue biomechanics, in-vitro bioreactor environments for tissue engineering, and mechanistic studies of cytokine activity and mechanical stimuli. The primary goals of his lab are to elucidate the mechanisms leading to multiple cardiovascular diseases and develop nonsurgical strategies to prevent and treat them, with particular focus on heart valves.
Tina Morrison is a regulatory advisor on computational modeling in the Office of Device Evaluation at the Food and Drug Administration. Her work advances regulatory science through modeling and simulation because she believes the future of medical device design and evaluation, and thus patient care, lies with computation and enhanced visualization.
Allison Okamura is an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford University. The objective of her research is to develop the principles and tools needed to realize advanced robotic and human-machine systems capable of haptic (touch) interaction. Her interests include teleoperation, virtual environments and
simulators, medical robotics, neuromechanics and rehabilitation, prosthetics, and engineering education.
Sonna Patel-Raman is a senior consultant at Halloran Consulting Group, Inc. Her focus is on US and global clinical and regulatory strategies for the life sciences industry. Her expertise is in cardiovascular clinical trial design, pre-clinical bench testing, human factors, informed consent and patient rights, and risk analysis/failure modes and effects analysis. She also has experience with a variety of medical devices and drugs used in the respiratory and gastrointestinal system, plastic and reconstruction surgery, and orthopedic surgery.
Ashley Peterson is a principal research and development engineer in the Aortic and Peripheral Vascular Group at Medtronic. His focus is on combining computational and experimental methods in fluid and structural mechanics. He has overall technical responsibility for computational fluid dynamics and structural finite element simulations and hemodynamic testing of stent grafts. Previous research concentrated on the creation of high efficiency energy generation devices and multi-physics turbomachinery design.
Jeff Sakamoto is an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan where he studies solution-based synthesis of porous materials. The ability to order interconnected porosity at multiple length scales provides a modular experimental platform enabling investigations into the interplay between micro-meso-macro pore morphology and mass/charge transport for energy storage and biomedicine.
Erin Spinner is a biomedical research engineer in the Advanced Technologies Department of Edwards Lifesciences. Her focus is on translational research and heart valve device development from design ideas to first-in-man trials. She believes better understanding of the native anatomy and physiology is critical to applying engineering principles to innovative device development. This is aided through non-invasive imaging techniques and in vitro testing.
Eric Stangland is a principal research scientist at The Dow Chemical Company within the Core R&D division. His research interests include heterogeneous catalyst material and process development, porous material characterization, and rate- and equilibrium-based adsorbent material design.
Daniel Steingart is an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University. His interests are in the formation, degradation, and maintenance of cyclical and long-term structures created through electrochemical processes. These include products created through primary metal production facilities, electrochemical energy storage devices, and corrosion/passivation products.
Sarah Stewart is a senior research engineer for the Research and Technology Center at Robert Bosch LLC where her work is in developing next-generation batteries for use in vehicle applications. Currently, she is developing physics-based models to predict the behavior of batteries. These models can be used as tools to design batteries for optimal performance, as well as to control the use of the batteries in order to minimize degradation and performance limitations.
Chris Urmson leads the Self-Driving Car Project at Google. He leads a team focused on addressing the technical, regulatory, and social challenges necessary to field a commercially viable self-driving vehicle.
Matthew Williamson is the director of technology at Rethink Robotics. He leads a group developing technologies for a low-cost collaborative robot used in manufacturing.
