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).

Seymour E. Goodman, Ph.D., joined the Georgia Tech faculty in 2000 as Professor of International Affairs and Computing and Co-Director of the Georgia Tech Information Security Center, jointly in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and the College of Computing. Prof. Goodman's research interests include international developments in the information technologies (IT), technology diffusion, IT and national security, critical infrastructure protection, and related public policy issues. Areas of geographic interest include the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, South and East Asia, and parts of Africa. Earlier research had been in areas of statistical and continuum physics, combinatorial algorithms, and software engineering. He is the author or co-author of about 150 publications in these subjects, and serves in various editorial capacities for several academic journals, including contributing editor for International Perspectives for the Communications of the ACM since 1990. He has served on numerous study and advisory committees for the ACM, the Departments of Commerce, Defense, and State, the US Congress, and the National Research Council. Prof. Goodman's work has been supported by almost three dozen funding sources, most recently by multi-year grants from the National Science Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation. He teaches several undergraduate and graduate courses in science and technology and national and international security.  In 2010, he was appointed to the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Research Council of the National Academies. Secondary research interests include the impact of S&T on the American Civil War, World War II, and the Cold War. Prof. Goodman was an undergraduate at Columbia University and obtained his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology.

Dr. Grijalva joined the Georgia Institute of Technology in the summer of 2009 as Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is the Director of the Advanced Computational Electricity Systems (ACES) Laboratory, where he conducts research on real-time power system control, informatics, and economics, and renewable energy integration in power. From 2012-2015, Dr. Grijalva served as the Strategic Energy Institute (SEI) Associate Director for Electricity Systems, responsible for coordinating large efforts on electricity research and policy at Georgia Tech. Dr. Grijalva received the Electrical Engineer degree from EPN-Ecuador in 1994, the M.S. Certificate in Information Systems from ESPE-Ecuador in 1997, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1999 and 2002, respectively. He was a post-doctoral fellow in Power and Energy Systems at the University of Illinois from 2003 to 2004. From 1995 to 1997, he was with the Ecuadorian National Center for Energy Control (CENACE) as engineer and manager of the Real-Time EMS Software Department. From 2002 to 2009, he was with PowerWorld Corporation as a senior software architect and developer of innovative real-time and optimization applications used today by utilities, control centers, and universities in more than 60 countries. Dr. Grijalva is a leading researcher on ultra-reliable architectures for critical energy infrastructures. He has pioneered work on de-centralized and autonomous power system control, renewable energy integration in power, and unified network models and applications. He is currently the principal investigator of various future electricity grid research projects for the US Department of Energy, ARPA-E, EPRI, PSERC as well as other Government organizations, research consortia, and industrial sponsors. Research interests: Power system and smart grid computation De-centralized and autonomous power control architectures Ultra-reliable electricity internetworks Seamless integration of large-scale renewable energy Electricity markets design and power system economics

A principal research scientist, Christine Conwell is the interim executive director of the Strategic Energy Institute (SEI) since September 2024 and has served as the director of planning and operations since 2020. She oversees strategic and annual planning within SEI and partners with campus researchers and units to create and execute strategic programs and events. Most recently, she led the development of a new five-year action plan and launched a signature initiative to build energy-focused research partnerships with historically Black colleges and universities and minority-serving institutions.  

Before her role at SEI, Conwell was managing director of the $40 million NSF-NASA Center for Chemical Evolution (CCE) in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, where she oversaw daily operations, fostered collaborations between 12 universities and other partners, and developed outreach and educational programs. Annually, she worked with more than 80 faculty, postdoctoral researchers, and students and advised on key opportunities to maximize the center's impact. She served as a key leader within CCE’s management team and, in 2020, she was awarded Georgia Tech’s prestigious Outstanding Achievement in the Research Enterprise Award for her leadership.

Conwell holds a B.S. in molecular biology and chemistry from Westminster College in Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Georgia Tech. She has authored several peer-reviewed manuscripts, book chapters, and grants on her research in DNA biophysics and non-viral gene delivery, and was a postdoctoral recipient of the NIH Ruth Kirschstein National Research Service Award. During her time at Georgia Tech, Conwell has served as a member of the Research Faculty Senate and the Faculty Executive Board, and she was selected as a member of the fifth Leading Women at Georgia Tech cohort.

Victor Fung is an Assistant Professor in the School of Computational Science and Engineering. Prior to this position, he was a Wigner Fellow and a member of the Nanomaterials Theory Insitute in the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. A physical chemist by training, Fung now works at the intersection of scientific artificial intelligence, computing, and materials science/chemistry.

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.

Emma Hu joins the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Tech as an assistant professor. Her group will use quantum mechanical modelling combined with materials informatics to understand the underlying mechanisms of energy harvesting and utilization at the atomic level, and reveal structure-property-performance relationships for knowledge/data-driven materials design.

Her research seeks to accelerate the discovery of materials with complex properties to solve time-sensitive problems involving green energy production and climate remediation.

Emma obtained her Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry in 2018 from the University of California, Riverside, and her B.S. in Chemistry in 2013 from University of Science and Technology of China. She then spent two years as a postdoctoral scholar in the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory from 2018-2020. Before joining Georgia Tech, Emma was an Assistant Professor at City University of New York from 2020-2023.