Dr. Boukouvala is originally from Piraeus, which is the port of Athens in Greece. As the daughter of an airforce pilot, she travelled a lot with her family. Her first international move was actually to the USA, where she spent one year in Montgomery, Alabama. She later on lived in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and Crete, Greece, before returning to Athens to get her B.S Degree in Chemical Engineering from the National Technical University in Athens. In 2008, she moved back to the US to obtain a PhD in Chemical Engineering at Rutgers University in NJ. She then worked as a Postdoctoral Associate in both Princeton University and Texas A&M University. In August 2016, Dr. Boukouvala returned to the South East US, as an Assistant Professor in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech. 

Her research interest in Process Systems Engineering (PSE) started during her PhD years, where she worked under the supervision of Dr. Marianthi Ierapetritou, on modeling and optimization of continuous pharmaceutical manufacturing. Her background on optimization and data-driven modeling was enhanced during her years as a postdoc with the late Christodoulos A. Floudas. Dr. Boukouvala is a proud 4th generation member of the academic family tree of the father of PSE, Roger Sargent.

Dr. Aidun joined the Woodruff School as a Professor in 2003 after completion of a two-year period as program director at the National Science Foundation. He began at Tech in 1988 as an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Paper Science and Technology. Prior, he was a research Scientist at Battelle Research Laboratories, Postdoctoral Associate at Cornell University and Senior Research Consultant at the National Science Foundation's Supercomputer Center at Cornell. 

Dr. Aidun's research is at the intersection between fundamentals of the physics of complex fluids/thermal transport and applications to engineering and biotransport. He has a diverse research portfolio in fluid mechanics, bioengineering, renewable bioproducts and decarbonization of industrial processes. 

A major focus has been to understand the physics of blood cell transport and interaction with glycoproteins (e.g., vWF) with applications to cardiovascular diseases.

Blair Brettmann received her B.S. in chemical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin in 2007. She received her Master’s in chemical engineering practice from MIT in 2009 following internships at GlaxoSmithKline (Upper Merion, PA) and Mawana Sugar Works (Mawana, India). Blair received her Ph.D. in chemical engineering at MIT in 2012 working with the Novartis-MIT Center for Continuous Manufacturing under Professor Bernhardt Trout. Her research focused on solid-state characterization and application of pharmaceutical formulations prepared by electrospinning. Following her Ph.D., Brettmann worked as a research engineer for Saint-Gobain Ceramics and Plastics for two years. While at Saint-Gobain she worked on polymer-based wet coatings and dispersions for various applications, including window films, glass fiber mats and architectural fabrics. Later, Brettmann served as a postdoctoral researcher in the Institute for Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago with Professor Matthew Tirrell. Currently, Brettmann is an assistant professor with joint appointments in chemical and biomolecular engineering and Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Tech.

Mark D. Losego is an associate professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Tech. The Losego research lab focuses on materials processing to develop novel organic-inorganic hybrid materials and interfaces for microelectronics, sustainable energy devices, national security technologies, and advanced textiles. The Losego Lab combines a unique set of solution and vapor phase processing methods to convert organic polymers into organic-inorganic hybrid materials, including developing the science to scale these processes for manufacturing.  Prof. Losego’s work is primarily experimental, and researchers in his lab gain expertise in the vapor phase processing of materials (atomic layer deposition, physical vapor deposition, vapor phase infiltration, etc.), the design and construction of vacuum equipment, interfacial and surface science, and materials and surface characterization. Depending on the project, Losego Lab researchers explore a variety of properties ranging from electrical to electrochemical to optical to thermal to sorptive to catalytic and more.

Zhiqun Lin is currently Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research focuses on nanostructured functional materials (NanoFM). An extensive list of materials currently under investigation in his group includes polymer-based nanocomposites, block copolymers, polymer blends, conjugated polymers, quantum dots (rods, tetrapods, wires), magnetic nanocrystals, metallic nanocrystals, semiconductor metal oxide nanocrystals, ferroelectric nanocrystals, multiferroic nanocrystals, upconversion nanocrystals, thermoelectric nancrystals, core/shell nanoparticles (nanorods), hollow nanocrystals, Janus nanocrystals, nanopores, nanotubes, hierarchically structured and assembled materials, and semiconductor organic-inorganic nanohybrids.

The goal of his research is to understand the fundamentals of these nanostructured materials. His group intends to create these nanostructures in a precisely controllable manner and to exploit the structure-property relationships in the development of multifunctional materials for potential use in energy conversion (e.g., solar cells, photocatalysis, and hydrogen generation) and storage (e.g., batteries), electronics, optics, optoelectronics, magnetic materials and devices, nanotechnology, and biotechnology.

Elsa Reichmanis is Anderson Chair in Chemical Engineering in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Lehigh University. Prior to joining Lehigh, she was Professor and Pete Silas Chair in Chemical Engineering in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She started her independent career at Bell Labs where she was Bell Labs Fellow and Director of the Materials Research Department. She received her PhD and BS degrees in chemistry from Syracuse University. Her research interests include the chemistry, properties, and application of materials technologies for photonic and electronic applications. She has had impact in the design of new imaging chemistries for advanced lithographic applications, and designed one of the first readily accessible and manufacturable polymers for advanced silicon device manufacturing using 193 nm lithography. 

The Reichmanis research group is currently exploring polymeric and hybrid organic/inorganic materials chemistries for a range of device and electronic and sustainable energy applications. Her research, at the interface of chemical engineering, chemistry, materials science, optics, and electronics, spans from fundamental concept to technology development and implementation, with particular focus on polymeric and nanostructured materials for advanced technologies. Currently, efforts aim to identify fundamental parameters that will enable sub-nanometer scale dimensional control of organic, polymer and/or hybrid materials for applications including transistor devices, photovoltaics, and high-capacity energy storage. 

Reichmanis was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1995 and has participated in several National Research Council (NRC) activities. She was an elected member of the Bureau of the International Union for Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC); and has been active in the American Chemical Society throughout her career, having served as 2003 President of the Society. Elsa Reichmanis is the recipient of several awards, including the ACS Award in the Chemistry of Materials (2018), the ACS Award in Applied Polymer Science (1999), the ASM Engineering Materials Achievement Award (1996), and the Society of Chemical Industry’s Perkin Medal (2001). In other service, she is an Executive Editor of the ACS Journal Chemistry of Materials. 

The Reichmanis Group works at the interface of chemical engineering, chemistry, materials science, optics, and electronics spanning the range from fundamental concept to technology development and implementation. Research interests include the chemistry, properties and applications of materials technologies for electronic and photonic applications, with particular focus on polymeric and nanostructured materials for advanced technologies. in paper-based battery applications as well. 

Dr. Medford is interested in leveraging materials informatics, statistics, and machine learning to maximize the practical impact of fundamental atomic-scale simulations in the field of surface science and catalysis. His research areas include heterogeneous catalysis, oxide surface chemistry, density functional theory, kinetic models, uncertainty quantification, and Bayesian optimization and inference.

Kalaitzidou joined Georgia Tech as an assistant professor in the G.W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering in November of 2007. She also holds an adjunct appointment in the School of Materials Science and Engineering. She obtained her Ph.D. in manufacturing and characterization of polymer nanocomposites (PNCs) from Michigan State University and worked as a post-doctoral researcher on mechanics of soft materials in the Polymer Science and Engineering Department at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She was promoted to professor in 2019 and was also named a Rae S. and Frank H. Neely Professor in the same year. In November 2019 Kalaitzidou was named the Associate Chair for Faculty Development.