Ryan Lively was born in 1984. He spent approximately 16 years in Gainesville, FL and attended almost every home football game at The Swamp. He enrolled at Georgia Tech in 2002 as an eager Chemical Engineering student and has been a Yellow Jacket at heart ever since. During his studies at Georgia Tech, Ryan worked on research projects as diverse as ab initio quantum mechanical methods to estimate molecular binding energies, fresh Georgia peach preservation, composite spinneret design, dual-layer hollow fiber membrane spinning, and sorbent-loaded fiber spinning. Ryan introduced a rapid temperature swing adsorption (RTSA) approach for post-combustion CO2 capture, which was successfully demonstrated by adapting knowledge developed in membrane science to design unique nanoscale composite adsorbent/heat exchangers. After his Ph.D. (awarded in 2010), he spent almost 3 years as a post-doctoral research engineer at Algenol Biofuels, where he published 25 papers and filed two U.S. patent applications. His work at Algenol focused on developing energy-efficient liquid and vapor separation systems for downstream biofuel purification. 

He is now the Thomas C. DeLoach Professor in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His current research seeks to revolutionize fluid separation processes critical to the global energy and carbon infrastructure. He has a specific focus on membrane- and adsorbent-based science and technology to address some of the most difficult chemical separations. His group’s research activities range from fundamental material science and discovery to translational engineering applications focusing on making and testing separation devices. 

Ryan has received a variety of awards for his research efforts including the 2020 Allan P. Colburn Award from AIChE, and the 2022 Curtis W. McGraw Award from ASEE. He is currently an Editor for the Journal of Membrane Science and is the Secretary of the North American Membrane Society. He is the Director of the Center for Understanding & Controlling Accelerated and Gradual Evolution of Materials for Energy (UNCAGE-ME), an Energy Frontier Research Center of the US Department of Energy. He has over 160 publications in the field of separations including articles in Science, Nature and other impactful venues.

Peralta-Yahya has been part of Georgia Tech since 2012. Her diverse research group composed of chemists, biologists, and chemical engineers works in the area of engineering biology, drawing from principles of biochemistry and engineering to build systems for chemical detection and production. Specifically, her group focuses on the development of G protein-coupled receptors for biotechnology and biomedical applications, and the engineering of biological systems for the production of fuels and functionalized plant natural products. Early on, her work was recognized with several awards including a DARPA Young Faculty Award, a DuPont Young Professor Award, a Kavli Fellowship by the US Academy of Science, and an NIH MIRA award. Her group’s key accomplishments are 1) the standardization of GPCR-based sensors in yeast to reduce the cost and accelerate the pace of drug discovery for these receptors, which are the target of over 30% of FDA approved drugs, and 2) the development of advanced biofuels, including pinene, which, when dimerized, has sufficient energy content to power rockets and missiles.  Today, her group is funded to work on these and other cutting edge areas – including how to power a rocket returning from Mars and how to make synthetic cells learn without evolution – by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and NASA.

In May 2000, Dr. Yang earned his doctorate degree in environmental and resource engineering from the College of environmental science and forestry, State University of New York. He also held M.S. degree and B.Sc. degree in pulping and paper. He first joined IPST, the former of RBI at Georgia Tech, in 2000 as a post doctor fellow. Soon he was hired as research scientist I. In 2006, he was promoted to be research scientist II. In 2013, he was appointed to be the manager of pulping and bleaching lab. Beginning from 2016, Dr. Yang has been teaching Pulp & Bleaching Lab (ChBE4873). In 2019, he was assigned additional duty in managing chemical analysis lab. With strong educational background in wood chemistry, coupled with the acquired skills and experience in chemical analysis., Dr. Yang’s main area of interest was utilizations of natural resources, especially biomass, in a sustainable way. He also interested in the development of novel online detection and monitoring in chemical process, and providing technical services to the industries and research communities.

Jamshad Mahmood has over 23 years of experience in corrosion testing and manufacturing of recovery boilers and pressure vessels. He is a Mechanical/Research Engineer with expertise in the design, manufacturing of industrial equipments and conducting lab corrosion testing e.g., slow strain rate corrosion testing, electrochemical corrosion testing, high-temperature aqueous corrosion testing and molten salts corrosion testing. In addition to laboratory experimentation, Jamshad conducted several field studies evaluating in-situ corrosion of pulp mill equipments e.g., digesters, paper machines, storage tanks and recovery boiler tubes. He manages the corrosion laboratories and chemical inventories for the corrosion group. Prior to joining the Institute of Paper Science and Technology in 1997, he worked as Manager Production for 8 years with Descon Engineering Works – one of the large boiler manufactures.

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Professor of the Practice                       
School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
College of Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology

Associate Director, Pulp, Paper, Packaging and Tissue, Renewable Bioproducts Institute, an Interdisciplinary Research Institute at GT

Director, GT Pulp and Paper Engineering Undergraduate Certificate Program and Foundation
 

Brief Biography:  
Luettgen has 25 plus years of industry experience, with Scott Paper and Kimberly-Clark Corp., where he most recently served as head of North American Innovation the Kimberly-Clark Professional business sector. He has held positions in product development and innovation as well as in capital project management and manufacturing facility leadership.

For several years, Luettgen has served on the Georgia Tech Renewable Bioproducts Institute Industry Board of Advisors, and as the Chairman of the Board of the Technical Association of the Pulp & Paper Industry (TAPPI).  He earned his bachelor's degree in Paper Engineering at Western Michigan University (’85), his master’s degree at the Institute of Paper Chemistry, Appleton, WI (’87), and his Ph.D. in Surface Chemistry at the Institute of Paper Science and Technology - now the Renewable Bioproducts Institute at Georgia Tech (’91).

He rejoined Georgia Tech in November 2014 as a Professor of the Practice in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and Associate Director of Pulp, Paper, Tissue and Packaging at RBI. He also serves as the Director of the undergraduate Pulp and Paper Certificate Program and its Foundation.

Areas of research interest include:  Recycling; renewable cellulosic feedstocks; replacing fossil-based products with bio-based materials; commercialization of nanocellulosic materials in consumer and packaging products; Smart Manufacturing and Industry 4.0; tissue/towel manufacturing and converting; and manufacturing leadership / operational excellence.

Jianxin (Roger) Jiao (M’01) received the Bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Tianjin University of Science and Technology, Tianjin, China, the Master's degree in manufacturing engineering from Tianjin University, Tianjin, China, and the Ph.D. degree in industrial engineering from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Kowloon, Hong Kong, in 1998.,He is currently an Associate Professor of enterprise systems engineering in the G. W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. He was an Assistant Professor and Associate Professor in the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His research interests include engineering design, manufacturing systems and logistics, affective computing, and engineering management.

When Dr. Rosen arrived at Georgia Tech, he helped form the Systems Realization Laboratory, along with Drs. Janet Allen, Bert Bras, and Farrokh Mistree. In August 1995, Dr. Rosen was appointed the Academic Director of the Georgia Tech Rapid Prototyping and Manufacturing Institute (RPMI), where he has responsibility for developing educational and research programs in rapid prototyping. In 1998, he was appointed the Director of the RPMI. He began at Tech in Fall 1992 as an Assistant Professor.