TAMEST 2025 Annual Conference Speakers

TAMEST 2025 Annual Conference speakers will examine game-changing advancements in the fields of materials science and nanotechnology, space exploration, regeneration and synthetic biology, energy transition and more. Learn more about our conference speakers below.

John L. Anderson, Ph.D.

John L. Anderson, Ph.D. (NAE)

President

National Academy of Engineering

John L. Anderson became president of the National Academy of Engineering in July 2019. His professional career spanned 48 years in academia. He served as president of the Illinois Institute of Technology, and as provost and executive vice president at Case Western Reserve University. His 28-year tenure on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University included eight years as dean of the College of Engineering and eleven years as head of the Chemical Engineering Department. His first faculty appointment was in Chemical Engineering at Cornell University.

As a professor, he has taught classes to first-year undergraduates all the way through to PhD students, and he has always enjoyed learning from students. He has held visiting professorships at MIT (Guggenheim fellow), University of Wageningen (The Netherlands), and University of Melbourne (Australia). Honorary doctorates have been awarded to him by Illinois Institute of Technology, University of Delaware, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Case Western Reserve University.

Anderson was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1992 for his research on colloidal hydrodynamics and membrane transport. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and he received the Acrivos Professional Progress Award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. He was a presidential appointment to the National Science Board for the period 2014-20. Dr. Anderson received the Washington Academy of Sciences Distinguished Career Award in Engineering in May 2022.

Anderson received a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Delaware and a PhD degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, both in chemical engineering. He is married to Patricia Siemen Anderson; they have two children and five grandchildren.

Richard G. Baraniuk

Richard Baraniuk, Ph.D. (NAE)

C. Sidney Burrus Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University

Founding Director, OpenStax and SafeInsights

Richard G. Baraniuk is the C. Sidney Burrus Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University and the Founding Director of OpenStax and SafeInsights. He is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering and American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, AAAS, and IEEE. For his research in signal processing and machine learning, he has received the DOD Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellow Award, the IEEE Signal Processing Society Norbert Wiener Society Award. For his work in open education, he has received the C. Holmes MacDonald National Outstanding Teaching Award from Eta Kappa Nu, the IEEE James H. Mulligan, Jr. Medal, and the Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Prize in Education.
Rita Baranwal, Ph.D.

Rita Baranwal, Ph.D.

Senior Vice President

Energy Systems

Westinghouse Electric Company

As Senior Vice President, Dr. Rita Baranwal leads development and deployment of the AP300™ Small Modular Reactor (SMR). She has over 25 years of nuclear industry experience and has held this role since May 2023.

Prior to this role, Dr. Baranwal was Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Digital and Innovation at Westinghouse where she led the clean energy company’s global research and development investments and spearheaded a technology strategy to advance the company’s innovative nuclear solutions.

Previously, Dr. Baranwal served as Chief Nuclear Officer and Vice President of Nuclear at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). She had overall management and technical responsibility for the research and development (R&D) activities conducted by EPRI with its global membership related to nuclear generation, providing support to more than 80 percent of the world’s existing and advanced commercial nuclear fleet.

Before joining EPRI, Baranwal served as Assistant Secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy in the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in a U.S. President-appointed and Senate-confirmed role. She led efforts to promote R&D on existing and advanced nuclear technologies that sustain the U.S. fleet of nuclear reactors and enable the deployment of advanced nuclear energy systems.

Prior to the DOE, Dr. Baranwal directed the Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) initiative at Idaho National Laboratory. She was responsible for providing the nuclear industry and other stakeholders access to DOE’s state-of-the-art R&D expertise, capabilities, and infrastructure to achieve faster and cost-effective development, demonstration, and ultimate deployment of innovative nuclear energy technologies. Under her leadership, GAIN positively impacted over 120 organizations.

Before joining the Idaho National Laboratory, Dr. Baranwal served as Director of Technology Development & Application at Westinghouse. There, she led the creation and development of game-changing technologies and managed characterization and hot cell laboratories. Her previous positions at Westinghouse included director of Core Engineering and manager of Materials and Fuel Rod Design. Prior to joining Westinghouse, she was a manager in Materials Technology at Bechtel Bettis, Inc. where she led and conducted R&D in advanced nuclear fuel materials for U.S. Naval Reactors.

Dr. Baranwal is a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society (ANS). She serves on the inaugural Board of Directors for the DOE’s Foundation for Energy Security and Innovation (FESI) and on Advisory Boards for the US Nuclear Industry Council (US NIC) and the Nuclear Engineering departments of the University of Michigan and North Carolina State University. She also serves as a Commissioner on the Council on Strategic Risks (CSR) High Level Commission on Nuclear Energy and Climate Security and on the Nuclear Energy Agency (OECD-NEA)’s High-level Group on Stakeholder Engagement, Trust, Transparency and Social Sciences (HLG-SET).

Dr. Baranwal has a bachelor’s degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in materials science and engineering and a master’s degree and Ph.D. in the same discipline from the University of Michigan.

Trevor Best

Trevor Best

Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder

Syzygy Plasmonics

Trevor Best is the CEO and Co-Founder of Syzygy Plasmonics. Syzygy is pioneering industrial reactor cells designed to produce chemicals at lower cost and with fewer carbon emissions. Their reactions are driven by light rather than combustion, enabling a substantially more efficient process. Reactor cells have passed qualification testing and Syzygy is actively engaging customers for commercial installations of ammonia e-cracking systems for hydrogen production, and of CO2-to-Fuels systems for reforming carbon dioxide into fuel.

Before starting Syzygy, Trevor worked for the oilfield services company Baker Hughes. There he held a variety of management positions and gained expertise in technology development, project and personnel management, quality assurance, and regulatory compliance. He is originally from Midland Texas and is a graduate of Texas Tech University.

A.C. Charania

A.C. Charania

Agency Chief Technologist

NASA

As the Agency Chief Technologist, A.C. Charania serves as principal advisor to NASA’s administrator on technology policy and programs. He also leads technology innovation at the agency and aligns NASA’s agency-wide technology investments with mission needs across the six mission directorates. Charania oversees technology collaboration with other federal agencies and the private sector while coordinating with external stakeholders.

Charania is an experienced leader in entrepreneurial space and aviation ventures, whose private sector work also includes projects under contract for NASA, the Air Force, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). His breadth of experience spans multiple areas, including launch vehicles, hypersonics, human/robotic exploration, lunar landers, planetary defense, small satellites, and aviation autonomy. Before joining NASA, he served as vice president of product strategy at Reliable Robotics.

Matthew T. McDowell, Ph.D.

Matthew McDowell, Ph.D.

Associate Professor and Carter N. Paden, Jr. Distinguished Chair

George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and School of Materials Science and Engineering

Georgia Tech

Matthew McDowell is an Associate Professor and the Carter N. Paden, Jr. Distinguished Chair for Innovation in Materials Science and Metals Processing at Georgia Tech, with appointments in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Materials Science and Engineering. His research is focused on understanding and engineering materials for energy storage. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2013 and was a postdoc at Caltech from 2013 until 2015. He is the Co-Director of the Georgia Tech Advanced Battery Center (GTABC) and an Associate Editor of ACS Nano. McDowell has received numerous awards, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), Sloan Fellowship, the ECS Battery Division Early Career Award, and Georgia Tech’s Outstanding Achievement in Early Career Research award.

Jason Rolland

Jason P. Rolland, Ph.D.

Senior Vice President of Materials

Carbon, Inc.

As SVP of Materials at Carbon, Dr. Jason Rolland leads the development of new polymer materials for use with Carbon Digital Light Synthesis™ (DLS™) technology to address product needs across a wide range of industries. He co-invented Carbon’s dual-cure materials platform, which led to the subsequent development of a broad range of high-performance materials, including rigid and flexible polyurethanes, polyurethane elastomers, high-temperature cyanate ester and epoxy-based resins, dental resins, and silicone-based materials. Previously, Dr. Rolland was Senior Director of Research at Diagnostics for All, and Co-founder and Director of R&D at Liquidia Technologies (NASDAQ: LQDA). He holds a B.S. in chemistry from Virginia Tech and a Ph.D. in chemistry from UNC Chapel Hill. A named inventor over 50 patents, Dr. Rolland has received numerous awards recognizing his achievements, including the American Chemical Society (ACS) 2014 Kathryn C. Hach Award for Entrepreneurial Success. In 2019 he was named the recipient of the prestigious ACS POLY Young Industrial Polymer Scientist Award.
Ryan Spitler, Ph.D.

Ryan Spitler, Ph.D.

Program Manager

Health Science Futures

Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H)

Dr. Ryan Spitler joined ARPA-H in November 2023 from Stanford University, where he served as founding deputy director of the Precision Health and Integrated Diagnostics Center. Spitler has over 20 years of experience working in health areas ranging from medical devices to the life sciences. He is a serial entrepreneur and cofounder of a health care and life science venture fund.

In addition to executive training from Stanford University’s School of Business, Spitler holds a doctorate in cellular and developmental biology from the University of California, Irvine, completed postdoctoral research in medical imaging and synthetic biology at Stanford University School of Medicine, and has served as teaching faculty at the Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign. His work has led teams in the development of smarter monitoring and diagnostic technologies to improve early detection and treatment of disease.

Jun Wu, Ph.D.

Jun Wu, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Department of Molecular Biology

UT Southwestern Medical Center

Dr. Jun Wu is an associate professor in the department of molecular biology at UT southwestern medical center. Dr. Wu’s work has contributed to the development of novel culture systems and methods that enable the generation of new stem cells for basic and translational studies. Dr. Wu has expanded the spectrum of pluripotent states by capturing mouse pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) with distinct molecular and phenotypic features from different developmental stages. And some of these culture conditions developed in mice enabled the generation of PSCs from many other mammalian species, including humans, non-human primates, and ungulates. In addition, Dr. Wu has developed efficient and versatile blastocyst complementation methods for in vivo generation of functional tissues and organs from cultured PSCs, and several stem cell derived embryo models. Dr. Wu has received several awards including UT southwestern endowed scholar (2017), CPRIT scholar (2017), NYSCF-Robertson Stem Cell Investigator award (2022), and the ISSCR Outstanding Young Investigator Award (2024).

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