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.

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.

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 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.

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.