Bernard Kippelen was born and raised in Alsace, France. He studied at the University Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg where he received a Maitrise in Solid-State Physics in 1985, and a Ph.D. in Nonlinear Optics in 1990. From 1990 to 1997 he was Charge de Recherches at the CNRS, France. In 1994, he joined the faculty of the Optical Sciences Center at the University of Arizona. There, he developed a research and teaching program on polymer optics and plastic electronics. In August 2003, Dr. Kippelen joined the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology where his research ranges from the investigation of fundamental physical processes (nonlinear optical activity, charge transport, light harvesting and emission), to the design, fabrication and testing of light-weight flexible optoelectronic devices and circuits based on nanostructured organic materials. He currently serves as director of the Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics, and as co-president of the Lafayette Institute, a major optoelectronics commercialization initiative that is based at Georgia Tech-Lorraine in Metz, France. He currently holds 25 patents and has co-authored over 270 refereed publications and 14 book chapters. His publications have received over 20,000 citations and his h-index is 73 (Google Scholar). He served as chair and co-chair of numerous international conferences on organic optoelectronic materials and devices and as deputy editor of Energy Express. He was the founding editor of Energy Express.

Krista S. Walton is the Associate Dean for Research & Innovation in the College of Engineering and Professor and Robert "Bud" Moeller Faculty Fellow in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech. She received her B.S.E. in chemical engineering from the University of Alabama-Huntsville in 2000 and obtained her Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Vanderbilt University in 2005, working with Prof. M. Douglas LeVan. Prof. Walton completed an ACS PRF Postdoctoral Fellowship at Northwestern University in 2006 under the direction of Prof. Randall Snurr.

Her research program focuses on the design, synthesis, and characterization of functional porous materials for use in adsorption applications including carbon dioxide capture and air purification. She has published > 80 peer-reviewed articles and presented dozens of plenary lectures and invited seminars. Prof. Walton currently serves as an Associate Editor for the ACS Journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, and is the Director and Lead PI of Georgia Tech’s DOE Energy Frontier Research Center, UNCAGE-ME. Prof. Walton’s accomplishments have been recognized by many prestigious awards including the inaugural International Adsorption Society Award for Excellence in Publications by a Young Member of the Society (2013) and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2008).

Sholl’s research focuses on materials whose macroscopic dynamic and thermodynamic properties are strongly influenced by their atomic-scale structure. Much of this research involves applying computational techniques such as molecular dynamics, Monte Carlo simulations and quantum chemistry methods to materials of interest. Although the group's work is centered on computational methods, it involves extensive collaboration with experimental groups and industrial partners.

Don White is a professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE). He has been a member of the CEE faculty at Georgia Tech since 1997. Prior to joining Georgia Tech, White served on the faculty at the Purdue University School of Civil Engineering from 1987 to 1996. He received his doctorate in Structural Engineering from Cornell University in 1988, and is an alumnus of North Carolina State University. Prior to graduate study, White worked as a structural engineer in Raleigh, NC.

White’s research covers a broad area of design and behavior of steel and composite steel-concrete structures as well as computational mechanics, methods of nonlinear analysis and applications to design. White is a member of the AISC Technical Committees 4, Member Design, and 10, Loads, Analysis and Stability, the AISI Bridge Design Advisory Group, the AISC Specification Committee, and several AASHTO/NSBA Steel Bridge Collaboration Task Groups. He is past Chair of the SSRC Task Group 29, Second-Order Inelastic Analysis of Frames and currently serves on the Executive Committee of the SSRC.

White has served as a major contributor to the steel design and structural analysis sections of the AASHTO LRFD Bridge Design Specifications and the ANSI/AISC Specification for Structural Steel Build­ings during the past 20 years. He was a lead author on the 1997 ASCE publication Effective Length and Notional Load Approaches for Assessing Frame Stability: Implications for American Steel Design, which was a precursor of the development of the AISC Direct analysis Method of design, referred to as the DM. Furthermore, White was a major participant ad hoc task group efforts leading to the development of the DM, which is the preferred method of stability design in the AISC Specification for Design of Steel Building Structures. Subsequent to these developments, the Metal Building Manufacturers Association (MBMA) provided White the opportunity to extend a number of these developments to updated procedures for design of frames using web-tapered members, which is captured within the AISC/MBMA Design Guide 25. White received the 2005 Special Achievement Award and the 2009 T.R. Higgins lectureship award from AISC for his research on design criteria for steel and composite steel-concrete members in bridge and building construction. He received the 2006 Shortridge Hardesty Award from ASCE for his research on advanced frame stability concepts and practical design formulations. For efforts leading to the comprehensive update to the 2005 AASHTO LRFD provisions for steel I- and box-girder bridge design, and unification of AASHTO LRFD provisions for straight and curved girder bridge design, White received the 2007 Richard S. Fountain Bridge Task Force Award and, with M. Grubb and W. Wright, the 2006 Richardson Medal from the Engineers’ Society of Western Pennsylvania.

White has conducted research on a wide range of topics relating to stability analysis and design and construction engineering of steel bridge structures. This includes work on construction simulation of curved and skewed steel bridges, investigation of the behavior of thin-web girders, and stability of components and structural systems during construction and in their final constructed condition. He was one of several researchers privileged to be involved closely with curved steel bridge experimental testing at the FHWA Turner Fairbank Highway Research Center from 1997 through 2005. White was P.I. and lead author of the NCHRP Report 725, Guidelines for Analytical Methods and Construction Engineering of Curved and Skewed Steel Girder Bridges. This work contributed additional substantive advances to the state-of-the-art in the engineering of curved and skewed steel girder bridge structures. White is currently P.I. on a multi-year FHWA-sponsored effort with the goal of modernizing the AASHTO LRFD provisions pertaining to all types of noncomposite box-section members including truss members, edge girders in cable-stayed spans, arch ribs, arch ties, and tower legs.

Phanish Suryanarayana joined the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in August 2011. He received his B.Tech. from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India in 2005. He obtained his M.S. in Aeronautics from California Institute of Technology in 2006. Subsequently, he received his Ph.D. in Aeronautics from California Institute of Technology in 2011 for his thesis titled "Coarse-graining Kohn-Sham Density Functional Theory". His research interests are in the areas of multiscale modeling, ab-initio calculations, density functional theory, continuum mechanics and smart materials. Overall, he is interested in developing efficient numerical methods for solving problems arising in a variety of fields. On a personal level, Dr. Suryanarayana is a sports enthusiast. He plays badminton, cricket, waterpolo, and ultimate frisbee. He also is an avid gamer (PC) and enjoys playing bridge and other board game

Chris Jones was born in suburban Detroit, Michigan in July of 1973. After his primary and secondary schooling and 14 years living Troy, Michigan, he enrolled as a chemical engineering student at the University of Michigan. In route to earning a BSE in chemical engineering, Chris carried out research on transition metal carbide and nitride catalytic materials under the direction of Levi Thompson. After graduating in 1995, Chris moved to Pasadena, California, to study inorganic materials chemistry and catalysis under Mark E. Davis at Caltech. There he earned M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in chemical engineering in 1997 and 1999, respectively. Subsequently, he studied organometallic chemistry and olefin polymerization under the direction of both Davis and John E Bercaw at Caltech. He started as an assistant professor at Georgia Tech in the summer of 2000 and was promoted to associate professor in July 2005. In May, 2005, he was appointed the J. Carl and Sheila Pirkle Faculty Fellow, followed by a promotion to professor in July 2008. He was named New-Vision Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in July 2011. In 2015, he became the Love Family Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and in 2019 the William R. McLain Chair. Chris was named the associate vice president for research at Georgia Tech in November 2013. In this role, he directed 50% of his time on campus-wide research administration with a primary focus on interdisciplinary research efforts and policy related to research institutes, centers and research core facilities. In 2018, he served as the interim executive vice-president for research, before returning full time to his research and teaching roles in chemical and biomolecular engineering in 2019.

Jones directs a research program focused primarily on catalysis and CO₂ separation, sequestration and utilization. A major focus of his laboratory is the development of materials and processes for the removal of CO₂ from air, or “direct air capture” (DAC). In 2010 he was honored with the Ipatieff Prize from the American Chemical Society for his work on palladium catalyzed Heck and Suzuki coupling reactions. That same year, he was selected as the founding Editor-in-Chief of ACS Catalysis, a new multi-disciplinary catalysis journal published by the American Chemical Society. In 2013, Chris was recognized by the North American Catalysis Society with the Paul E. Emmett Award in Fundamental Catalysis and by the American Society of Engineering Education with the Curtis W. McGraw Research Award. In 2016 he was recognized by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers with the Andreas Acrivos Award for Professional Progress in Chemical Engineering, distinguishing him as one of the top academic chemical engineers under 45. In 2020, after ten years building and leading ACS Catalysis, he was selected as the founding Editor-in-Chief of JACS Au by an international editorial search committee commissioned by the ACS. Dr. Jones has been PI or co-PI on over $72M in sponsored research in the last seventeen years, and as of December 2020, has published over 300 papers that have been cited >28,000 times. He has an H-Index of 82 (Google Scholar).

Research in the Sherrill group focuses on the development of ab initio electronic structure theory and its application to problems of broad chemical interest, including the influence of non-covalent interactions in drug binding, biomolecular structure, organic crystals, and organocatalytic transition states. We seek to apply the most accurate quantum models possible for a given problem, and we specialize in generating high-quality datasets for testing new methods or machine-learning purposes. We have developed highly efficient algorithms and software to perform symmetry-adapted perturbation theory (SAPT) computations of intermolecular interactions, and we have used this software to analyze the nature of non-covalent pi-interactions in terms of electrostatics, London dispersion forces, induction/polarization, and short range exchange-repulsion. 

Srinivas Aluru is executive director of the Institute for Data Engineering and Science (IDEaS) and professor in the School of Computational Science and Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. He co-leads the NSF South Big Data Regional Innovation Hub which nurtures big data partnerships between organizations in the 16 Southern States and Washington D.C., and the NSF Transdisciplinary Research Institute for Advancing Data Science. Aluru conducts research in high performance computing, large-scale data analysis, bioinformatics and systems biology, combinatorial scientific computing, and applied algorithms. An early pioneer in big data, Aluru led one of the eight inaugural mid-scale NSF-NIH Big Data projects awarded in the first round of federal big data investments in 2012. He has contributed to NITRD and OSTP led white house workshops, and NSF and DOE led efforts to create and nurture research in big data and exascale computing. He is a recipient of the NSF Career award, IBM faculty award, Swarnajayanti Fellowship from the Government of India, the John. V. Atanasoff Discovery Award from Iowa State University, and the Outstanding Senior Faculty Research Award, Dean's award for faculty excellence, and the Outstanding Research Program Development Award at Georgia Tech. He is a Fellow of AAAS, IEEE, and SIAM, and is a recipient of the IEEE Computer Society Golden Core and Meritorious Service awards.

Surya Kalidindi is a Regents Professor, and Rae S. and Frank H. Neely Chair Professor in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia, USA with joint appointments in the School of Materials Science and Engineering as well as the School of Computational Science and Engineering. Surya earned a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992, and joined the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Drexel University as an Assistant Professor. After twenty years at Drexel University, Surya moved into his current position at Georgia Tech. Surya’s research efforts have made seminal contributions to the fields of crystal plasticity, microstructure design, and materials informatics. Surya has been elected a Fellow of ASM International, TMS, and ASME. In 2016, he and his group members have been awarded the top prize as well as one of the runner-up prizes in the national Materials Science and Engineering Data Challenge sponsored by the Air Force Research Lab in partnership with the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. National Science Foundation. He has also been awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Research Award, the Vannever Bush Faculty Fellow, the Government of India’s Vajra Faculty Award, and the Khan International Award.

Youjiang Wang joined Georgia Tech faculty in 1989. His research interests include mechanics of composites, yarns, fabrics, and geotextiles; manufacturing processes and characterization of fibers, textiles and textile structural composites; and fiber recycling. Wang is a registered Professional Engineer in the State of Georgia, and a Fellow of ASME.