About the Speakers

Learn more about our workshop speakers below:

Kimberly Kurtis

Professor, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Scholarship, College of Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology

http://www.mse.gatech.edu/people/kimberly-kurtis

Dr. Kimberly Kurtis is Professor at Georgia Tech in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering holds a courtesy appointment in Materials Science and Engineering. She earned her BSE (1994) in Civil Engineering from Tulane University under a Deans Honor Scholarship and her MS (1995) and PhD (1998) in Civil Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, where she was a Henry Hilp Fellow and a National Science Foundation (NSF) Fellow. Dr. Kurtis’s innovative research on the multi-scale structure and performance of cement-based materials has resulted in more than 200 technical publications, as well as four US patents. Her group is particularly recognized its use of emerging methods and novel approaches to provide new fundamental insights into the behavior of cement pastes, mortars, and concretes necessary for improving their early age behavior and long-term durability. She has held two leadership positions – Chairman of ACI Committee 236: Materials Science of Concrete (2006-2012) and Chair of American Ceramic Society’s Cements Division (2008-2009) – central to advancing science-based research on cement-based materials. Dr. Kurtis has served as Associate Editor of ASCE Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering and on the Editorial Board of Cement and Concrete Composites and is currently Editorial Board member for Cement and Concrete Research and serves on the American Concrete Institute’s Board of Directors. She has been honored with ACI’s Walter P. Moore, Jr. Faculty Achievement Award (2005), ACI’s Del Bloem Award for Service (2013), Outstanding Senior Undergraduate Research Mentor Award at Georgia Institute of Technology (2013), the ACI James Instruments Award for Research on NDE of Concrete (2008), Award for Outstanding Article in ASTM’s Journal of Testing and Evaluation (2010), ASCE’s Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize (2013), and ACI’s Anderson Medal (2019). Dr. Kurtis is Fellow of the American Concrete Institute and the American Ceramics Society.

Scott Schiffres

Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering,
Binghamton University

http://ws.binghamton.edu/schiffres/

Scott Schiffres pursues research at the intersection of additive manufacturing, thermal metrology, and energy storage. In 2019, he received an NSF CAREER award. Prior to joining the faculty at Binghamton University in January 2016, Scott was a Postdoctoral Associate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked on energy efficient adsorption refrigeration with Professors Evelyn Wang, and heat transfer applications of nanomaterials and additive manufacturing with John Hart. In 2014, Scott received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University working in the area of experimental nanoscale heat transfer with Prof. Jonathan Malen. In 2010, Scott was awarded a Steinbrenner Institute Research Fellowship. Scott spent the summer of 2012 as a visiting researcher at Professors Junichiro Shiomi and Shigeo Maruyama’s Laboratory at The University of Tokyo through a joint US-Japan East Asia Pacific Summer Institute Fellowship. Before returning to academia in the fall of 2009, he worked as a Flight and Controls Engineer at Boeing’s Satellite Development Center in Los Angeles. Scott graduated from Princeton University in 2006 with a BSE in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and a certificate in Robotics and Intelligent Systems, and from Cornell University with a MEng in Mechanical Engineering in 2007.

Muhammad Rabnawaz

Assistant Professor, School of Packaging
Michigan State University

https://www.canr.msu.edu/rabnawaz/index

Muhammad Rabnawaz, Ph.D., has been an assistant professor for the Michigan State University (MSU) School of Packaging since August 2016. In 2013, he earned a Ph.D. from Queen’s University, Canada, in polymer chemistry, and held postdoctoral positions at Queen’s University between 2013 and 2015, as well as the University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana) between 2015 and 2016. Currently, he is pursuing research in the field of polymer science encompassing sustainable materials and multifunctional materials. One of his mission is to create new generation of highly skilled workforce, reduce plastic waste from packaging industry, and create end-of-life solutions for waste plastics. He teaches multiple courses including Packaging with Plastics, an undergraduate-level course; Advanced Polymer Synthesis, a graduate-level course; and Packaging Sustainability and Recycling, a graduate-level course. Dr. Rabnawaz has authored over 50 refereed publications in leading scientific journals and is co-author of the renowned book on “Plastics Packaging” 4th edition. In addition, he holds 33 patents filed/issued within the U.S. and internationally, including at least 8 that are licensed or optioned. Dr. Rabnawaz has received multiple awards, including the 2021 MSU Innovator of the Year and NSF CAREER award 2021. Dr. Rabnawaz is also co-founder of a couple of companies related to his MSU technologies. He is also a knowledge partner for “Circular Great Lakes” with a zero-plastic mission.

Patrick "Pat" Phelan

Professor & Assistant Dean, Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering School for Engineering of Matter,
Transport, & Energy Senior Sustainability Scientist, ASU Global Institute of Sustainability,
Arizona State University

https://isearch.asu.edu/profile/79040

Patrick “Pat” Phelan is a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, and assistant dean of graduate programs at Arizona State University’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. He recently spent four years in Washington D.C. as the manager of the Emerging Technologies Program at the U.S. Department of Energy, Building Technologies Office. Previously, he served as the manager of the Thermal Transport Processes Program at the National Science Foundation. He researches and teaches in sustainable energy, thermal transport, and energy policy.

Asegun Henry

Robert N. Noyce Career Development Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

https://ase.mit.edu/

Dr. Asegun Henry started as an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT in 2018, where he directs the Atomistic Simulation & Energy (ASE) Research Group. Prior to MIT, he was an Assistant professor in the Woodruff school of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech from 2012 to 2018. He holds a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Florida A & M University as well as a M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT. Professor Henry’s primary research is in heat transfer, with an emphasis on understanding the science of energy transport, storage and conversion at the atomic level, along with the development of new industrial scale energy technologies to mitigate climate change. After finishing his Ph.D. he worked as a postdoc in the Materials Theory group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and then as postdoc in the Materials Science Department at Northwestern University. After Northwestern, he worked as a fellow in the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E), where he focused on identifying new program areas, such as higher efficiency and lower cost energy capture, conversion and storage. Professor Henry has made significant advances and contributions to several fields within energy and heat transfer, namely: solar fuels and thermochemistry, phonon transport in disordered materials, phonon transport at interfaces, and he has developed the highest temperature pump on record, which used an all-ceramic mechanical pump, to pump liquid metal above 1400°C. This technological breakthrough, which is now in the Guinness Book of World Records, has opened the door for new high temperature energy systems concepts, such as methane cracking for CO2 free hydrogen production and a new grid level energy storage approach affectionately known as “Sun in a Box”, that is projected to be cheaper than pumped hydro. Professor Henry has also been the recipient of a number of awards including: the National Science Foundation Career Award, the Lockheed Inspirational Young Faculty Award, the Georgia Power Professor of Excellence Award, the ASME Bergles-Rohsenow Young Investigator Award in Heat Transfer and he was the winner of the 2018 World Technology Award for Energy. He has also been awarded a number of fellowships including an MIT Lemelson Presidential Fellowship, a Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship, a UNCF-Merck Postdoctoral Fellowship and a Ford Foundation postdoctoral Fellowship.
 
Nenad Miljkovic
Associate Professor, Mechanical Science and Engineering
Associate Director, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Center
Deputy Thrust Leader, Center for Power Optimization of Electro-Thermal Systems
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

nmiljkov@illinois.edu
(617) 981-9247
http://etrl.mechanical.illinois.edu/

Dr. Nenad Miljkovic is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He has courtesy appointments in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the Materials Research Laboratory. He is the Associate Director of the Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Center (ACRC), which is supported by 30 industrial partners. His group’s research intersects the multidisciplinary fields of thermo-fluid science, interfacial phenomena, scalable nanomanufacturing, and renewable energy. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the ACS PRF DNI Award, the ONR YIP Award, a Distinguished Visiting Fellowship from the UK Royal Academy of Engineering, a U.S. NAS Arab-American Frontiers Fellowship, the ASME ICNMM Young Faculty Award, the ASME Pi Tau Sigma Gold Medal, the CERL R&D Technical Achievement Award, the UIUC Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research, the US Army Corps of Engineers ERDC R&D Achievement Award, the SME Young Faculty Award, the Bergles-Rohsenow Young Investigator Award in Heat Transfer, and is a Kritzer Faculty Scholar at the University of Illinois.

Marta Hatzell

Associate Professor, George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology

https://www.hatzelllab.gatech.edu/

Marta Hatzell is an Associate Professor and Woodruff Faculty Fellow in the Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. Prior to starting at Georgia Tech in August of 2015, she was a Post-Doctoral researcher in the Department of Material Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois - Urbana-Campaign. During her post doc, she worked in the Braun Research group on research at the interface between colloid science and electrochemistry. She completed her PhD at Penn state University in the Logan Research Group. Her PhD explored environmental technology for energy generation and water treatment. During graduate school, she was an NSF and PEO Graduate Research Fellow. Currently Dr. Hatzell’s research group focuses on exploring the role photochemistry and electrochemistry may play in future sustainable systems. She is an active member of the American Chemical Society, the Electrochemical Society, ASEEP, AiCHE, and ASME. Dr. Hatzell received the NSF Early CAREER award in 2019, the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship in Chemistry in 2020, the ONR Young Investigator Award in 2020, and the ECS Toyota Young Investigator award in 2021.

Jonathan Boreyko

Associate Professor, John R. Jones III Faculty Fellow
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Virginia Tech

https://nifi.me.vt.edu/

Jonathan Boreyko is an Associate Professor and John R. Jones III Fellow at Virginia Tech in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. His research lies at the intersection of fluid mechanics, phase-change heat transfer, and materials science and has been covered by The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and NPR. He has over 60 publications which have been cited over 3,750 times. Recent awards received by Dr. Boreyko include the NSF CAREER Award, the Air Force YIP Award, the ASEE Outstanding New Mechanics Educator Award, and the ASME ICNMM Outstanding Early Career Award. His current research interests include condensation and frost phenomena, thermal diodes, three-phase heat transfer, and water harvesting with fog harps and synthetic trees.

Bruce R. Locke

Chair & Distinguished Research Professor of Chemical & Biomedical Engineering
Florida A&M University-Florida State University

https://www.eng.famu.fsu.edu/cbe/people/locke

Dr. Bruce R. Locke is currently the Department Chair of the Chemical and Biomedical Engineering department at FAMU-FSU College of Engineering. He earned his B.E. in Chemical Engr. and Environmental & Water Resources Engr. from Vanderbilt U. in 1980, MS. from the U. of Houston in 1982, and PhD in Chemical Engr. from North Carolina State U. in 1989. During 1982‐86 he was at the Research Triangle Institute working on analysis of submicron aerosol particles in microelectronics manufacturing. He has been a professor in the Dept. of Chemical and Biomedical Engr. at Florida State University (FSU) since 1989 where he was department chair during 2005‐12. He was an Associate Provost at FSU during 2012‐18 responsible for international programs and was interim dean of the FAMU‐FSU College of Engineering in 2015‐16. He was named FSU Distinguished University Research Professor in 2010. Dr. Locke has published 139 journal papers, 8 book chapters and holds 10 patents. He has been visiting professor in Japan, France, and China, and was a Fulbright Research Scholar at the Czech Academy of Sciences in 2017‐18. He is Fellow of the American Inst. of Chemical Engineers and is co‐Editor‐in‐Chief of Plasma Chemistry and Plasma Processing. His research interests include plasma reaction engineering for chemical synthesis and environmental pollution control, emphasizing gas‐liquid plasma reactor development.

Kara Kockelman

Dewitt Greer Centennial Professor of Transportation Engineering
Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
The University of Texas at Austin.

https://www.caee.utexas.edu/prof/kockelman/

Kara Kockelman is a registered professional engineer and holds a PhD, MS, and BS in civil engineering, a master’s in city planning, and a minor in economics from the University of California at Berkeley. She has been a professor of transportation engineering at the University of Texas at Austin for 23 years, and is the recipient of an NSF CAREER Award, Google Research Award, MIT Technology Review Top 100 Innovators Award, Vulog’s Top 20 of 2020 Influential Women in Mobility, and various ASCE, NARSC, TRF, and WTS awards. She recently served as President of the North American Regional Science Association and sits on the Eno Center for Transportation’s Advisory Board, as well as 3 TRB Committees. She has authored over 180 journal articles (and two books), and her primary research interests include planning for shared and autonomous vehicle systems, the statistical modeling of urban systems, energy and climate issues, the economic impacts of transport policy, and crash occurrence and consequences. Pre-prints of these articles (and book contents) can be found at www.caee.utexas.edu/prof/kockelman.

Andrew Alleyne

Ralph M. and Catherine V. Fisher Professor in Engineering
Director, NSF Engineering Research Center on Power Optimization of Electro Thermal Systems
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign

https://arg.mechse.illinois.edu/

Andrew G. Alleyne received the B.S.E. degree from Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, in 1989, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA, in 1992 and 1994, respectively. He is currently the Ralph and Catherine Fisher Professor with the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA, and the Director of the NSF ERC on Power Optimization for Electro-Thermal Systems (POETS). He held visiting professorships at TU Delft, Delft, The Netherlands, the University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland, and Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria. He works the modeling, simulation, and control of nonlinear mechanical systems. His academic record includes supervision of over 80 M.S. and Ph.D. students and over 400 conferences and journal publications. Dr. Alleyne is a fellow of American Society for Mechanical Engineers (ASME). He serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the U.S. Air Force and the National Academies Board on Army Research and Development. Recognitions include the IEEE CSS Distinguished Lecturer, a Fulbright, the Gustus Larson Award, the Charles Stark Draper Award, and the Henry Paynter Outstanding Investigator Award.

Ravi Prasher

Associate Lab Director of the Energy Technologies Area,
Interim Division Director of Cyclotron Road at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Adjunct Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley

https://thermalenergy.lbl.gov/

Ravi Prasher is the Associate Lab Director of Energy Technology Area (ETA) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. ETA with a staff of more than 400 people conducts research in a wide variety of areas, including building technologies, energy storage, renewable energy, manufacturing science and technology, and water desalination technologies. He is also an Adjunct Professor in Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley. Prior to joining LBL, Ravi was the VP of product development of Sheetak Inc., a startup developing thermoelectric energy converters. Ravi earlier worked as one of the first program directors at ARPA-E. Prior to joining ARAP-E, Ravi was the Technology Development Manager of Thermal Management group at Intel. Ravi has published more than 100 archival journal papers and holds more than 35 patents. He is a fellow of ASME. His research interests include applications of nano-to-macroscale thermal science and engineering in solving large scale societal problems such as GHG free energy conversion, storage and transport.

Kristen Cetin

Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Michigan State University

https://www.kristencetin.com/

Dr. Cetin is an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. She is a licensed Professional Engineer and a LEED AP and has over 10 years of experience in academia and industry in her field. She received her PhD in Civil Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, where she was also an NSF IGERT Fellow with a focus on Sustainable Grid Integration of Renewable and Distributed Resources. Prior to her PhD studies, Dr. Cetin worked in building envelope consulting in the Washington D.C. area and received her M.S. and B.S. in Civil Engineering at the University of Maryland. Dr. Cetin’s research involves the use of building energy and daylight modeling and smart technologies to improve building energy performance and reduce peak loads, while maintaining occupant comfort. She is also interested in smart technologies, and how the use and integration of the Internet of Things (IoT) can enhance building performance, comfort, and real-time assessment of performance. Dr Cetin also has experience in the assessment of the thermal and hygrothermal performance of buildings, and development of inverse grey-box and black-box models for building energy performance. She leads or has led 8 nationally funded research projects as PI, including funding from the National Science Foundation, ARPA-E, Sloan Foundation, ASHRAE, ACRP, and industry. She collaborates on a broad range of projects, including those from FAA, IowaDOT, IHRB, Iowa Energy Center, and the U.S. EPA. She is an active member of ASHRAE, particularly in Technical Committee 7.5 – Smart Building Systems, and in MTG.OBB – Occupant Behavior in Buildings. She is also an Associate Editor for the ASCE Journal of Architectural Engineering, on the Conference and Expositions Committee in ASHRAE, and an Assistant Mentor for the ASCE ExCEEd Teaching Workshop.

Jason Woods

Senior Research Engineer,
National Renewable Energy Laboratory

https://www.nrel.gov/research/staff/jason-woods.html

Jason Woods is a senior research engineer within NREL's Building Energy Science Group. He leads modeling and experimental projects on thermal energy storage and novel air-conditioning technologies, which include multidisciplinary research spanning materials development to systems integration. Woods is an expert in numerical and experimental heat and mass transfer, primarily for building applications. His research interests include novel thermal energy storage materials and systems, membrane-based HVAC processes, heat and mass transfer enhancements, liquid desiccant and absorption air conditioning, and moisture adsorption and transport in materials.

Ming Qu

Professor, School of Civil Engineering
Purdue University

https://engineering.purdue.edu/CE/People/Faculty/mqu/about

Dr. Ming Qu is a professor of Architectural Engineering in the School of Civil Engineering at Purdue University. She is interested in the development and application of energy efficient technologies in buildings to improve human well-fare. Her research focuses on solar cooling and heating system, building heat transfer, building energy supply systems, building controls and operations, building and building system modeling & simulation, sustainable building design and analysis, and building system integration dedicated to sustainable and healthy built environments. She won DOE and NSF awards for various projects on building heat transfer study, solar cooling and heating system, liquid desiccant technologies, and others. She published numerous papers in journals and conferences. She is a member of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers and of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Dolaana Khovalyg

Assistant Professor in Energy and Building Systems, smart living lab
EPFL; Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne

https://www.smartlivinglab.ch/en/groups/tebel/

Dr. Khovalyg is an Assist. Professor at the School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering at the EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne), where she heads the Thermal Engineering for the Built Environment Laboratory (TEBEL). She is a thermophysicist by training with a Ph.D. degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where she performed research work at the Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Center (ACRC). She is an Associate Member of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE). Her research focuses on advanced design and control of energy-sufficient adaptive thermal systems in buildings. The group's main research field is centered on reducing the operating temperature of thermal systems in buildings by adopting low-temperature emission systems, personalized indoor thermal conditioning promoting metabolic health, and adaptive hot water production considering hygiene issues.

Srinivas Garimella

Hightower Chair in Engineering and Professor, Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology

https://stsl.gatech.edu/garimella.php

Dr. Srinivas Garimella is the Hightower Chair in Engineering and Director of the Sustainable Thermal Systems Laboratory at Georgia Institute of Technology. He received M. S. and Ph.D. degrees from The Ohio State University, and a Bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. He has held prior positions as Research Scientist at Battelle Memorial Institute, Senior Engineer at General Motors Corp., and Associate Professor at Western Michigan University and Iowa State University. He is a Fellow of the ASME, past Associate Editor of the ASME J. Heat Transfer, and Editor of the Int. J. Air-conditioning and Refrigeration. He has also served as Associate Editor of the ASME J Energy Resources Technology, and Past Chair of the Advanced Energy Systems Division of ASME. He was an Associate Editor of the ASHRAE HVAC&R Research Journal and was on the ASHRAE Research Administration Committee. He held the William and Virginia Binger Associate Professorship of Mechanical Engineering at ISU. He has mentored over 75 postdoctoral researchers, research engineers and students pursuing their M.S. and Ph.D. degrees, with his research resulting in over 350 archival journal and conference publications, a textbook on Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow in Minichannels and Microchannels (2nd Ed., Elsevier 2014), and books on Condensation Heat Transfer (World Scientific Publishing, 2015) and Adsorption Heat Pumps (Springer Nature, 2021.) He has been awarded seventeen patents. He is the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award (1999), the ASHRAE New Investigator Award (1998), the SAE Ralph E. Teetor Educational Award for Engineering Educators (1998), and was the Iowa State University Miller Faculty Fellow (1999-2000) and Woodruff Faculty Fellow (2003-2008) at Georgia Tech. He received the ASME Award for Outstanding Research Contributions in the Field of Two-Phase Flow and Condensation in Microchannels, 2012. He also received the Thomas French Distinguished Educator Achievement Award (2008) from The Ohio State University, the Zeigler Outstanding Educator Award (2012) at Georgia Tech, and the Student Recognition of Excellence in Teaching: Class of 1934 Award, March (2021).

Douglas MacMartin

Senior Research Associate and Senior Lecturer
Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University

https://www.mae.cornell.edu/faculty-directory/douglas-macmartin

Douglas MacMartin is a Senior Research Fellow in the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University. His research focuses on climate engineering (also known as solar geoengineering or climate intervention) with the aim of helping to develop the knowledge base necessary to support informed future societal decisions in this challenging and controversial field. He has published extensively on the subject, and in addition to public and academic presentations has provided briefings to the UN Environment Program and testimony to the US Congress, and was a member of the US National Academies panel that made recommendations on both research and governance in March 2021. He received his Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT in 1992; previous positions include United Technologies Research Center (1994-2000) and the California Institute of Technology (2000-2015). His research is funded by NSF and by the Cornell Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future.

Jeremy Munday

Professor and Vice Chair for Graduate Studies, Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of California, Davis

https://mundaylab.com/

Jeremy Munday is Professor at the University of California, Davis. He received his PhD in Physics from Harvard, was a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech, and then spent 8 years at the University of Maryland before moving to UC Davis in 2019. He is a fellow of the Optical Society of America (OSA) and is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the ONR YIP Award, the DARPA YFA, DARPA Directors Fellowship and the NASA Early Career Faculty Space Technology Research Award, as well as society awards including the OSA Adolph Lomb Medal, the IEEE Photonics Society Young Investigator Award, and the SPIE Early Career Achievement Award. Dr. Munday is interested in engineering the fundamental interaction between light and matter and applying this understanding to control quantum effects and for clean energy technologies. Specifically, the Munday group studies novel photonic, plasmonic, and quantum materials and seeks breakthrough energy generation and extraction technologies. This work merges physics and engineering to accomplish these goals.  

Jane Davidson

Professor and Ronald L. and Janet A. Christenson Chair in Renewable Energy, Mechanical Engineering
University of Minnesota

https://cse.umn.edu/me/jane-davidson

Jane Davidson is Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota and Director of the Solar Energy Laboratory. She holds the Ronald L. and Janet A. Christenson Chair in Renewable Energy. She received a Ph.D. from the Duke University in 1984. Before coming to Minnesota in 1993, she was a faculty member at the University of Delaware and the Colorado State University. Her current research addresses mixed and natural convection heat transfer in thermal storage systems, material characterization and thermal transport processes in polymer-based solar collectors and heat exchangers, solar thermo-chemical cycles, and chemical processes in gaseous electrical discharges. Dr. Davidson has served as Editor of the ASME Journal of Solar Energy Engineering, Chair of the ASME Solar Energy Division, and on the Boards of the American Solar Energy Society (ASES) and the Solar Rating and Certification Corporation. She is the recipient of the 2009 Ada Comstock Award, the 2007 American Solar Energy Society Charles Greeley Abbot Award, and the 2004 ASME John I. Yellott Award. She is a Fellow of ASME and ASES. For more information, please visit Professor Davidson’s homepage.

Amy Marconnet

Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering,
Purdue University

https://engineering.purdue.edu/MTEC

Amy Marconnet is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and a Perry Academic Excellence Scholar at Purdue University. She received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin – Madison in 2007, and an M.S. and a PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University in 2009 and 2012, respectively. She then worked briefly as a postdoctoral associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, before joining the faculty at Purdue University in August 2013. At Purdue, Dr. Marconnet has made significant contributions to the field of heat transfer developing an interdisciplinary research program to evaluate, understand, and control the physical mechanisms governing the thermal transport properties of materials, machines, and systems. In 2017, she won the Woman Engineer of the Year Award from the ASME Electronics & Photonics Packaging Division and, in 2020, she was recognized as the Outstanding Graduate Student Mentor for Mechanical Engineering by the College of Engineering at Purdue and the Bergles-Rohsenow Young Investigator Award in Heat Transfer from ASME.

Ranga Pitchumani

George R. Goodson Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Virginia Tech

https://amtl.me.vt.edu/

Dr. Ranga Pitchumani is the George R. Goodson Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech. He received the Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, and was with the University of Connecticut prior to joining Virginia Tech. Dr. Pitchumani served as the Department Head at the University of Connecticut and as the Associate Department Head for Research at Virginia Tech. From 2011–2015, Dr. Pitchumani served in an invitational role as the Chief Scientist for the SunShot Initiative at the U.S. Department of Energy, where he defined bold national goals for achieving cost-competitive solar energy technologies and their ubiquitous integration into the electric grid. He set the science and technology directions for the programs, established funding priorities, directed a team of program managers, technical, financial and support personnel, and oversaw the solar research and development programs at the Industry, National Laboratories and Universities. During his tenure, he was responsible for the launching of over $250M in new initiatives toward the SunShot goal of bringing the cost of solar-generated electricity down to grid parity, which was accomplished three years ahead of target in 2017. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the flagship journal Solar Energy, and serves on the editorial boards of other journals in the areas of energy and materials science. Dr. Pitchumani has served on the Advisory Board for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) and as the U.S. representative on the Executive Committee of the International Energy Agency. He is the author of 250 articles and is an inventor on 3 patents or disclosures. For his career accomplishments, Dr. Pitchumani was recognized by his alma mater, the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, as a Distinguished Alumnus. He is a Fellow of the ASME and has won many professional awards including the Hoyt Clark Hottel Award from the American Solar Energy Society and, earlier in his career, the Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research.

Nenad Miljkovic

Associate Professor, Mechanical Science and Engineering
Associate Director, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Center
Deputy Thrust Leader, Center for Power Optimization of Electro-Thermal Systems
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

http://etrl.mechanical.illinois.edu/

Dr. Nenad Miljkovic is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He has courtesy appointments in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the Materials Research Laboratory. He is the Associate Director of the Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Center (ACRC), which is supported by 30 industrial partners. His group’s research intersects the multidisciplinary fields of thermo-fluid science, interfacial phenomena, scalable nanomanufacturing, and renewable energy. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the ACS PRF DNI Award, the ONR YIP Award, a Distinguished Visiting Fellowship from the UK Royal Academy of Engineering, a U.S. NAS Arab-American Frontiers Fellowship, the ASME ICNMM Young Faculty Award, the ASME Pi Tau Sigma Gold Medal, the CERL R&D Technical Achievement Award, the UIUC Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research, the US Army Corps of Engineers ERDC R&D Achievement Award, the SME Young Faculty Award, the Bergles-Rohsenow Young Investigator Award in Heat Transfer, and is a Kritzer Faculty Scholar at the University of Illinois.