Wednesday, April 6, 2022 We are delighted to welcome you to campus to participate in this year’s symposium, a full day in-person event on Wednesday, April 6th with a focus on how the Institute enables and grows synergies and collaborations, across campus and with external partners, laying the foundation for breakthrough scientific and technological innovation. We are honored to have Dr. Ahmad Bahai, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Texas Instruments, as our morning keynote speaker, followed by four panel discussions focused on materials in bioengineering, water and energy, advanced manufacturing, and entrepreneurship, along with five presentations by new faculty and a lunchtime talk on the startup ecosystem. Program Speakers Parking Visitors Speakers Craig B. Arnold, Susan Dod Brown Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Director, Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials, Princeton University. Craig B. Arnold is the Susan Dod Brown Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University and the director of the Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials. His research ranges from basic science to applied technology aimed at developing a deeper understanding of fundamental materials synthesis and processing with interests in energy storage systems, laser materials processing and advanced manufacturing. He earned his PhD in condensed-matter physics from Harvard University, and was an NRC post-doctoral fellow prior to joining the faculty at Princeton in 2003. He has earned numerous accolades for his work in materials processing including the Edison Patent Award, an R&D 100 award, the Laser Focus World-OSA technology innovation award, and the SPIE PRISM award for photonics innovation. Prof. Arnold is a fellow of OSA and SPIE. Ahmad Bahai, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Texas Instruments. Ahmad Bahai, Ph.D, is a senior vice president and chief technology officer (CTO) of Texas Instruments responsible for guiding break-through innovation, corporate research and Kilby Labs. Dr. Bahai is an Adjunct professor at Stanford University, and IEEE Fellow. He was a professor in residence at UC Berkeley from 2001-2010. Throughout his career, Dr. Bahai has held a number of leadership roles including director of research labs and chief technology officer of National Semiconductor, technical manager of a research group at Bell Laboratories and founder of Algorex, a communication and acoustic IC and system company, which was acquired by National Semiconductor. He holds a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from Imperial College, University of London and a doctorate degree in Electrical Engineering from University of California, Berkeley Emily C. Davidson, Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Princeton University. Emily Davidson joined Princeton University as an Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering in January 2021. Her group's work encompasses the control of material structure from the molecular to macroscopic length scales leveraging polymer synthesis, polymer physics, and additive manufacturing as a tool to bridge these scales. Additional focuses include studying the physics of both stimuli-responsive gels and elastomers and sustainable depolymerizable polymers. She carried out her graduate research at UC Berkeley (Ph.D. 2016) and UC Santa Barbara with Professor Rachel Segalman, where she synthesized and studied (1) conjugated block copolymers to probe the interplay between crystallization and self-assembly and (2) sequence-defined block copolymers to gain insights into the role of secondary chain shape in block copolymer self-assembly. Emily performed postdoctoral work with Professor Jennifer Lewis's group at Harvard University focused on the development and 3D assembly of liquid crystal elastomers with light-activated dynamic bonds. Emily received a bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2010. From 2010-2012, Emily taught high school chemistry and physics through the Teach for America program. In her free time, Emily enjoys being active, photography, taking care of her impressive collection of houseplants, and spending time with her husband and son. Emily was honored with the Scientista 'Born Seekers' award in 2019 and recently received Princeton University 'Project X' School of Engineering Innovation Funds to support her group's 'out of the box' work in additive manufacturing. Pablo Debenedetti, Dean for Research. Class of 1950 Professor in Engineering and Applied Science. Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Princeton University. Pablo G. Debenedetti is the Class of 1950 Professor in Engineering and Applied Science, Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, and Dean for Research at Princeton University. He served as vice dean of Princeton’s School of Engineering and Applied Science from 2008 to 2013 and chair of the chemical engineering department between 1996 and 2004. He obtained his B.S. degree in chemical engineering from Buenos Aires University, Argentina (1978), and his M.S. (1981) and Ph.D. (1985) degrees, also in chemical engineering, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined the faculty of Princeton University in 1985. Pablo Debenedetti uses state-of-the-art theoretical and computational tools to study the properties of water and aqueous systems, and their applications in areas ranging from the long-term preservation of biomolecules and pharmaceutical compounds to water desalination. His interests span the thermodynamics and statistical mechanics of liquids and glasses, as well as explorations of water and aqueous solutions, protein thermodynamics, nucleation, metastability, and the origin of homochirality in biological systems. Using theoretical and computational methods rooted in statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, Debenedetti and his students have provided key insights into the physical properties of cold liquid water (supercooled water), which is found in large quantities in high-altitude clouds. His team has also computed the phase diagram and evaporation kinetics of water confined by nano-scale hydrophobic surfaces, which are important in understanding the mechanisms of biological self-assembly, and provided powerful insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying the extraordinary slowing down of dynamic processes in liquids close to their glass transition. Debenedetti's research group is applying free energy techniques to compute the phase behavior of molecular models of water, including transitions between distinct forms of liquid water at deeply supercooled conditions. Other areas of current interest in his research group include anti-freeze proteins, the relationship between chirality and folding of biomolecules, and the stability of proteins at high pressures and low temperatures. Pablo Debenedetti is the author of one book, Metastable Liquids, and more than 300 scientific articles. His professional honors include the Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation (1987); the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award from the Dreyfus Foundation (1989); a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1991); the Professional Progress (1997), Walker (2008), Institute Lecturer (2013) and Alpha Chi Sigma (2019) awards from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers; the John M. Prausnitz Award in Applied Chemical Thermodynamics (2001); the Joel Henry Hildebrand Award in the Theoretical and Experimental Chemistry of Liquids from the American Chemical Society (2008); and the Guggenheim Medal from the Institution of Chemical Engineers (2017). He received the Distinguished Teacher Award from Princeton’s School of Engineering (2008) and the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching (2008), Princeton’s highest distinction for teaching. In 2008, Dean Debenedetti was named one of 100 Chemical Engineers of the Modern Era by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Physical Society. Horacio D. Espinosa, James and Nancy Farley Professor of Manufacturing and Entrepreneurship, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and the Director of the Theoretical and Applied Mechanics Program at the McCormick School of Engineering, Northwestern University. Horacio D. Espinosa is the James and Nancy Farley Professor of Manufacturing and Entrepreneurship, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and the Director of the Theoretical and Applied Mechanics Program at the McCormick School of Engineering, Northwestern University. He received his Ph.D. in Solid Mechanics from Brown University in 1992. Espinosa has made contributions in the areas of deformation and failure of materials, design of micro- and nano-systems, in situ microscopy characterization of nanomaterials, and microfluidics for single cell manipulation and analysis. He has published over 300 technical papers in these topics. Espinosa received several awards including the PRAGER Medal from the Society of Engineering Science, the Society for Experimental Mechanics MURRAY and SIA NEMAT NASSER Medals, and the ASME THURSTON award. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), foreign member of Academia Europaea, the European Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Russian Academy of Engineering, and Fellow of AAAS, ASME, SEM, and AAM. He was the President of the Society of Engineering Science in 2012 and is a member of the IUTAM General Assembly. Jessica Freyer, Principal, Rhapsody Venture Partners. Jessica is a Principal at Rhapsody Venture Partners, a hard-tech venture capital firm based in Cambridge, MA. At Rhapsody, Jessica works to source investments, support portfolio companies like Princeton's very own Tendo Technologies, and liaise with industry partners on external innovation. Jessica received her PhD in Chemistry from Columbia University in 2018 where she studied structure-property relationships of aromatic ion containing polyelectrolytes. She is extremely passionate about material science and the power of innovation to establish a circular economy. After graduate school, Jessica worked as a management consultant at a boutique life science firm in Boston. Jessica lives in Boston, MA. In her free time, she enjoys baking, mixing fancy cocktails, and listening to reggaeton. Andrea J. Goldsmith, Dean, School of Engineering and Applied Science. Arthur LeGrand Doty Professor of Electrical Engineering, Princeton University. Andrea Goldsmith is the Dean of Engineering and Applied Science and the Arthur LeGrand Doty Professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University. She was previously the Stephen Harris Professor of Engineering and Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, where she is now Harris Professor Emerita. Her research interests are in information theory, communication theory, and signal processing, and their application to wireless communications, interconnected systems, and neuroscience. She founded and served as Chief Technical Officer of Plume WiFi (formerly Accelera, Inc.) and of Quantenna (QTNA), Inc, and she serves on the Board of Directors for Intel (INTC), Medtronic (MDT), Crown Castle Inc (CCI), and the Marconi Society. She also serves on the Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) and as the founding Chair of the IEEE Board of Directors Committee on Diversity, Inclusion, and Ethics. Dr. Goldsmith is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the IEEE. Her awards include the Marconi Prize, the IEEE Sumner Technical Field Award, the ACM Athena Lecturer Award, the ComSoc Armstrong Technical Achievement Award, the Kirchmayer Graduate Teaching Award, the WICE Mentoring Award, and the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal’s Women of Influence Award. She is author of the book ``Wireless Communications'' and co-author of the books ``MIMO Wireless Communications,” “Principles of Cognitive Radio,” and “Machine Learning and Wireless Communications,” all published by Cambridge University Press, as well as an inventor on 29 patents. Kelsey B. Hatzell, Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, Princeton University. Dr. Hatzell is an assistant professor at Princeton university in the Andlinger Center for Energy and Environment and department of Mechanical and aerospace engineering. Hatzell’s group primarily work on energy storage and is particularly interested at using non-equilibrium x-ray techniques to probe batteries during operando experimentation. Dr. Hatzell earned her Ph.D. in Material Science and Engineering at Drexel University, her M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Pennsylvania State University, and her B.S./B.A. in Engineering/Economics from Swarthmore College. Hatzell’s research group works on understanding phenomena at solid|liquid and solid|solid interfaces and works broadly i9n energy storage and conversion. Hatzell is the recipient of several awards including the ORAU Powe Junior Faculty Award (2017), NSF CAREER Award (2019), ECS Toyota Young Investigator Award (2019), finalist for the BASF/Volkswagen Science in Electrochemistry Award (2019), the Ralph “Buck” Robinson award from MRS (2019), Sloan Fellowship in Chemistry (2020), and POLiS Award of Excellence for Female Researchers (2021). Marta C. Hatzell, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology. Marta Hatzell is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. Hatzell’s research group focuses on exploring how to electrify catalytic and separation-based processes to enable sustainable industrial systems. Her group works on materials, characterization, and system analyses for electrolysis, fuel cells, desalination, and solar energy conversion processes. Hatzell completed her BS, MS, and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Penn State University, and completed an M.Eng in Environmental Engineering from Penn State University. Hatzell’s PhD research conducted with Prof. Bruce Logan explored environmental technologies for energy generation and water treatment. During her PhD, she was a NSF graduate research fellow and PEO fellow. Hatzell completed her post-doctoral research work within the Material Science and Engineering department at the University of Illinois Urbana- Champaign. Hatzell’s post-doctoral research conducted with Prof. Paul Braun explore the intersection of electrochemistry and colloid science. Hatzell received the Moore Inventor Fellowship (2021), ECS Toyota Young Investigator Award (2021), Woodruff Faculty Fellowship (2021), ONR Young Investigator Award (2020), Sloan Foundation Fellowship in Chemistry (2020), and the NSF Early CAREER award (2019). Eric M.V. Hoek, Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Eric Hoek is a professor in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), a faculty scientist in the Energy Storage & Distributed Resources Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and also a faculty member of UCLA’s Institute of the Environment & Sustainability and California NanoSystems Institute. He is also the Faculty Director of the UCLA Sustainable LA Grand Challenge, Deputy Topic Area Leader for Process Innovation & Intensification in the US DOE funded National Alliance for Water Innovation, and Editor-in-Chief of npj Clean Water. Dr. Hoek’s research explores the union of membrane technologies, nanomaterials and electrochemistry for water, energy, health and environmental applications. He has published over 140 peer-reviewed journal articles, books on Sustainable Desalination and Water Reuse and Oil & Gas Produced Water Management, and is co-Editor-in-Chief of The Encyclopedia of Membrane Science and Technology. Dr Hoek has also co-founded several technology companies and advises a number of private companies, government agencies, non-profit NGOs and investment funds. Jingjie Hu, Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, North Carolina State University. Jingjie Hu is an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at North Carolina State University. Dr. Hu’s research focuses on the mechanical behavior of biomedical and biological materials. Her work contributes to this understanding by focusing on the design, fabrication and characterization of bio related structures through integrated mechanics, materials and bioengineering approaches. It combines experimental and theoretical tools that enable the prediction of mechanical behaviors at the nano-, micro- and macro- scales. Dr. Hu’s research is highly interdisciplinary and impacts critical biomedical applications such as cancer detection and vascular embolization. Dr. Hu received her Ph.D. from Princeton University and her B.S.E. from the University of Michigan, both in mechanical engineering. Prior to joining NC State, she completed her postdoctoral training in translational bioengineering at Mayo Clinic. Marcus N. Hultmark, Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University. Marcus Hultmark is an associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University, and he is the director of the Princeton Gas Dynamics Lab. His research interests include a variety of problems related to fluid mechanics, with focus on problems involving turbulence, such as heat and mass transfer as well as drag reduction and wind energy. Theoretical work is combined with experimental studies, and an important part of his research program is the development and evaluation of new sensing techniques to investigate these phenomena with high accuracy, including velocity, temperature and humidity sensors. He was awarded the 2016 Air Force Young Investigator award, the 2017 NSF Career award and the 2017 Nobuhide Kasagi Award. He is co-founder of two MEMS based startup companies, both formed around innovations from his research lab. Andrej Košmrlj, Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University. Andrej Košmrlj is an assistant professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University. Andrej Košmrlj received his Ph.D. in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2011, and his postdoctoral training at Harvard University. He joined Princeton University in 2015, where his group is doing theoretical and computational research on complex systems ranging from materials science to the physics of living systems. For his research achievements, Andrej Košmrlj has received the NSF Career Award and the Alfred Rheinstein Faculty Award. For his teaching efforts, Andrej Košmrlj has received the Excellence in Teaching Award from the School of Engineering and Applied Science. Robert Kostecki, Senior Scientist and Division Director of the Energy Storage and Distributed Resources (ESDR), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Robert Kostecki is a Senior Scientist and Division Director of the Energy Storage and Distributed Resources (ESDR) Division in the Energy Technologies Area in Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He is responsible for ESDR scientific, programmatic and strategic leadership in the areas of energy and environment through expanding existing research programs, assistance with development and maintenance of sponsor and partner relationships and creating new research initiatives. His research interests focus on fundamental phenomena that determine electrochemical performance of electrochemical energy storage and conversion systems and water treatment technologies. Robert is often recognized for his pioneering work in the field of characterization of electrochemical interfaces and electrochemical systems engineering, especially in bridging the gap between fundamental science and applications of significant technological importance e.g., batteries, fuel cells and water treatment processes. He develops novel in situ and ex situ optical spectroscopy and imaging methodologies to sense basic properties of advanced materials and electrochemical interfaces at an atom, molecular or nanoparticle level. In his work he develops novel in situ and ex situ spectroscopy and imaging methodologies to probe basic properties of electrical energy storage materials and electrochemical interfaces at an atom, molecular or nanoparticulate level. He applies new experimental approaches to characterize fundamental issues affecting rechargeable battery performance, study the nature of physico-chemical properties of interfaces, nanostructures, and the mechanism of electrochemical and chemical phenomena that control the behavior of the electrochemical energy storage and conversion systems. His R&D efforts are directed toward technology development, and the use of state-of-the-art characterization tools to support the science and engineering of sustainable energy systems. Robert received his Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from the University of Geneva (Switzerland) in 1994. He has (co-)authored more than 130 papers in refereed journals, 17 conference proceedings papers, more than 250 meeting presentations and 30 patents and invention disclosures. He is Vice President of the International Society of Electrochemistry and an active member of numerous scientific societies and committees; organizer and chair of numerous symposia; and workshops and government-university-industry research meetings. Find out more about Robert Kostecki and his research at KosteckiLab.lbl.gov Nanshu Lu, Temple Foundation Endowed Associate Professor, University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Nanshu Lu is currently Temple Foundation Endowed Associate Professor and will be promoted to Full Professor in September 2022 at the University of Texas at Austin. She received her B.Eng. from Tsinghua University, Beijing, Ph.D. from Harvard University, and then Beckman Postdoctoral Fellowship at UIUC. Her research concerns the mechanics, materials, manufacture, and human/robot integration of soft electronics. She currently serves as Associate Editor of Nano Letters and Journal of Applied Mechanics. She has been named 35 innovators under 35 by MIT Technology Review (TR 35), iCANX/ACS Nano Inaugural Rising Star, and US National Academy of Medicine (NAM) Emerging Leaders in Health and Medicine. She has received US NSF CAREER Award, US ONR and AFOSR Young Investigator Awards, 3M non-tenured faculty award, the ASME Applied Mechanics Division Thomas J.R. Hughes Young Investigator Award. She has been selected as one of the five great innovators on campus and five world-changing women of the University of Texas at Austin. She is a Clarivate highly cited researcher. For more information, please visit Dr. Lu’s research group webpage at https://sites.utexas.edu/nanshulu/ and follow her Twitter: @nanshulu. Reza Moini, Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton University. Reza Moini joined the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Princeton University as an assistant professor in Jan 2021. He is the director of the Architected Materials and Additive Manufacturing Lab. Moini completed his Ph.D. in the Lyles School of Civil Engineering at Purdue University. His research focuses on bio-inspired design and development of architected cement-based materials using novel additive manufacturing processes and automated robotic technologies for applications in civil infrastructure. His work is motivated by the intellectual challenge of understanding the mechanics of intrinsically brittle and quasi-brittle engineering materials and the development of tough and flaw-tolerant responses using biomimetic design principles, fracture mechanics, and 3D-printing and robotic additive manufacturing. His research has been funded by National Science Foundation and he has been the recipient of several research and teaching awards. Celeste M. Nelson, Wilke Family Professor in Bioengineering. Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering. Director, Program in Engineering Biology, Princeton University. Celeste M. Nelson is the Wilke Family Professor in Bioengineering and a Professor of Chemical & Biological Engineering and Molecular Biology at Princeton University. She earned S.B. degrees in Chemical Engineering and Biology at MIT in 1998, a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 2003, followed by postdoctoral training in Life Sciences at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory until 2007. Her laboratory specializes in using engineered tissues and computational models to understand how mechanical forces direct developmental patterning events during tissue morphogenesis and during disease progression, with a particular emphasis on the vertebrate lung. She has authored more than 150 peer-reviewed publications. Dr. Nelson’s contributions to the fields of tissue mechanics and morphogenesis have been recognized by a number of awards, including a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface (2007), a Packard Fellowship (2008), a Sloan Fellowship (2010), the MIT TR35 (2010), the Allan P. Colburn Award (2011), a Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (2012), a Faculty Scholar Award from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (2016), election as a fellow to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (2016), and a Mid-Career Award from the Biomedical Engineering Society (2019). Glaucio H. Paulino, Margareta Engman Augustine Professor of Engineering. Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials, Princeton University. Glaucio H. Paulino is the Margareta Engman Augustine Professor of Engineering, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials at Princeton University. Paulino, a world leader in computational mechanics and topology optimization, designs robotic systems that fold like origami and behave like natural organisms. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2015 Cozzarelli Prize from the National Academy of Sciences, the 2020 Raymond D. Mindlin Medal from the American Society of Civil Engineers, the 2020 Daniel C. Drucker Medal of ASME, the 2020 Raymond D. Mindlin Medal of ASCE, and the 2020 Reddy Medal from Mechanics of Advanced Materials and Structures . In 2021, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for contributions to topology optimization and its applications to medicine and engineering. Christina A. Pellicane, Lead Instructor, I-Corps Hub, Office of the Vice Dean for Innovation, Princeton University. Christina Pellicane is the Assistant Director of Innovation and Lead Instructor for the NSF I-Corps Northeast Hub at Princeton University and COO at Lignolix, a chemical tech startup. She is a certified national NSF I-CorpsTM Instructor and Lean Launchpad educator at schools and incubators around the world. Most recently, she was the first Director of Commercialization for University of Delaware’s Horn Entrepreneurship Center where she managed several initiatives including a $2M Proof of Concept fund and the UD I-Corps Site. Ms. Pellicane has experience supporting high-tech entrepreneurs spin out of academia and experience in industry as a research associate at a biotech startup and a business development specialist in a clinical research organization. Ms. Pellicane is a patented inventor and holds a B.S. in Biology and Animal Science from the University of Georgia and a Master of Business and Science with a concentration in Biotechnology and Genomics from Rutgers University. H. Jerry Qi, Professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. H. Jerry Qi is a professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his bachelor’s graduate degrees from Tsinghua University and a ScD degree from MIT. After one-year postdoc at MIT, he joined University of Colorado Boulder as an assistant professor and moved to Georgia Tech in 2014. He was promoted to a full professor in 2016. Prof. Qi’s research focuses on developing fundamental understanding of multi-field properties of soft active materials through experimentation and constitutive modeling then applying these understandings to application designs. He and his collaborators have been working on a range of soft active materials, including shape memory polymers, light activated polymers, covalent adaptable network polymers, for their interesting behaviors such as shape memory, light actuation, welding, healing, and reprocessing. In the past ten years, he has been working on integrating soft active materials with 3D printing. He and his collaborators pioneered the 4D printing concept. Prof. Qi is a recipient of NSF CAREER award (2007) and was elected to an ASME Fellow. He is the GT site director of NSF I/UCRC SHAP3D Center on 3D Printing. Z. Jason Ren, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment. Associate Director for Research, Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, Princeton University. Dr. Z. Jason Ren (@zjasonren) is a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment at Princeton University. He is the Associate Director for Research for the Andlinger Center and served as the Acting Director in 2020-2021. Dr. Ren leads the Princeton WET Lab (Water & Energy Technologies) with research and teaching focusing on water sector decarbonization and digitalization. His group uses material science, electrochemistry, microbiology, and data science tools to understand the fundamental determining factors and develops models and technologies for resource recovery during environmental processes such as wastewater treatment, water desalination, environmental remediation, and carbon capture and utilization. Dr. Ren and his group have published nearly 200 peer reviewed articles in leading research journals, and their findings were featured by National Public Radio, Forbes, and Scientific American. Dr. Ren has received numerous recognitions with the most recent awards including the 2021 Paul L. Busch Award from the Water Research Foundation and the 2020 Walter L. Huber Research Prize from the American Society of Civil Engineers. Emily D. Sanders, Assistant Professor in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology. Emily D. Sanders is an Assistant Professor in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech. She obtained her Ph.D. at Georgia Tech in 2021, where she developed new topology optimization methods for design of tension-only cable nets, elastostatic cloaking devices, and multiscale structures and components. Her recent work aims to translate functionally-graded, multi-scale, optimized designs into physical parts using advanced manufacturing techniques. Emily holds a bachelor’s degree from Bucknell University and a master’s degree from Stanford University. Christian Theriault '07 *08, Partner, Material Impact. Christian Theriault is an award-winning serial entrepreneur with expertise across several deep tech industries. He has co-founded or been involved with startups in robotics, machine vision, medical devices, and new chemical entity development. His last company was acquired by a Japanese multinational and had the distinction of producing the world’s fastest focusing lens - widely used across several market verticals ranging from laser material processing to metrology, quality assurance and biomedical engineering. Christian has been involved with mentoring and investing in high-tech startups for nearly a decade; he currently serves as a mentor to several deep-tech startup accelerator programs such as Creative Destruction Lab, Endless Frontier Lab, and is the Lead Mentor & EIR for NSF’s I-Corps Northeast Hub. More recently, Christian joined Material Impact, a deep-tech VC firm based out of Boston, focusing on investment opportunities at the intersection of material science innovation and category defining products. Christian holds an MSE in Mechanical Engineering and an A.B. in Molecular Biology and Bioengineering, both from Princeton University; he has authored several academic papers and holds numerous patents. He currently serves as an advisor to several technology and consumer facing startups, is a director of Youth Science Canada, and resides in New York City. Marissa L. Weichman, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Princeton University. Marissa Weichman is an assistant professor of chemistry at Princeton University. Operating at the boundary between chemistry and molecular and optical physics, the Weichman Lab builds spectroscopic tools to probe the behavior of complex molecules and develops new ways to steer molecular processes using light. Marissa obtained her B.S. in chemistry in 2012 from the California Institute of Technology. She then pursued graduate studies in chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley where she was an NSF GRFP fellow in the group of Prof. Daniel Neumark, and also worked in collaboration with Prof. Knut Asmis’s group at the Fritz Haber Institute in Berlin. Marissa was awarded the 2018 Justin Jankunas Doctoral Dissertation Award in Chemical Physics from the American Physical Society for her thesis work. After completing her PhD in 2017, she joined the group of Dr. Jun Ye at JILA/CU Boulder as a NIST/NRC postdoctoral research fellow. Marissa began her independent career at Princeton Chemistry in July 2020. Anthony J. Williams, New Ventures Associate with the Office of Technology Licensing, Princeton University. As New Ventures Associate with the Office of Technology Licensing, Tony is responsible for supporting Princeton researchers in all aspects of the development of startup companies to move their research innovations out of the lab and into the marketplace. After earning a PhD in chemistry from the University of Cambridge, Tony gained postdoctoral research experience in materials chemistry at the University of Edinburgh, and then at Princeton University in the laboratory of Professor Robert Cava. He later earned an MBA from the University of Oxford, where he won a competitive fellowship to work for the university’s technology transfer office. Prior to starting at Princeton in February 2016, he worked on the Technology Ventures team at Imperial Innovations, the technology transfer office of Imperial College London and one of the UK’s leading investors in academic research-based startups. Saien Xie, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials, Princeton University, Saien Xie is an assistant professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Princeton Institute of Materials at Princeton University. His group studies scalable syntheses of atomically thin materials and scalable device integrations for applications in electronics and optoelectronics. Saien Xie received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2018. He was a Kavli postdoctoral fellow at Cornell before joining Princeton University in 2022.