Richard joined Georgia Tech in 2023 and focuses on energy and cleantech company formation, market strategy, funding, and partnerships in support of faculty led research and resulting startups. His domain expertise is in regulated and competitive energy markets, energy infrastructure development, project finance, go-to-market strategies, energy policy, multi-stakeholder negotiations and process improvement.

Prior to joining Georgia Tech, Richard co-founded several successful startups including Merit Sustainable Infrastructure, served as VP of Project Development for First Solar, and held leadership positions with power grid operator ERCOT, Energy Management Associates, Electronic Data Systems and Tenneco. Since 2007, Richard has led project development resulting in over 4,000 megawatts (nominally $4 billion) of operating solar and wind projects across the US. Most recently he has spearheaded development of ATL Cleantech Connect, a partnership between the Strategic Energy Institute at GT and the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce to grow the clean energy and sustainability startup ecosystem in and around Atlanta.

Richard holds an MBA from the University of St. Thomas, a BA in Economics from Southern Methodist University and attend the Advance Management Program (AMP) at the Harvard Business School.

Laura Taylor is the director of Energy Policy and Innovation Center (EPIcenter) at Georgia Tech. 

Taylor has over 30 years of experience n research, outreach, and policy engagement in the Southeast. It includes measuring the broader economic benefits associated with improved air, water, and ecosystem quality and is an elected fellow and past president of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists. She has held numerous advisory board positions, including the environmental economics subcommittee of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s science advisory board and the legislative research commission advisory subcommittee on offshore energy exploration for the North Carolina General Assembly.

Her work uses economic tools to improve environmental and energy systems management and policy. She also has research and policy experience focused on the intersection of energy systems and human health, water resource management, and land use. She has held numerous advisory board positions and is an elected fellow and past president of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists. 

Prior to her leadership role at the EPIcenter, Taylor served as the Chair of the School of Economics at Georgia Tech. During her time as chair, the School of Economics doubled its faculty with 19 new faculty members, and the number of students pursuing a major in economics increased by more than 50%. Economics also expanded its teaching and research in several areas including health, energy, environment, globalization, theory, and data analytics. The School’s bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D. programs achieved federal STEM designation in 2019, reflecting the curriculum’s tech-centered approach to liberal arts education and emphasis on using mathematical and statistical models. The School’s undergraduate economics program is ranked No. 1 among public universities in Georgia and No. 21 among public universities nationally in the 2025 U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges rankings.

Prior to joining the faculty at Georgia Tech in 2018, Taylor was Director of the Center for Environmental and Resource Economic Policy at North Carolina State University (2007-2018), and Associate Director of the Environmental Policy Program at Georgia State University (2001-2015). 

The Strategic Energy Institute is excited to welcome Scott McWhorter as a 2023 Distinguished External Fellow. Scott will co-lead the concept development, visioning, partnership, and preliminary capture activities for Georgia Tech on the Department of Commerce Tech Hubs (“Hubs”) and expand Georgia Tech’s hydrogen activities and stature.

Scott is not new to the Georgia Tech campus and has previously worked with Dan Campbell of the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) on developing trace organic optical sensors based on evanescent waveguides. More recently, Scott worked with David Sholl (professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech through 2021), to develop the RAPID (Rapid Advancement in Process Intensification Deployment) Institute and then through his work with Southeast Hydrogen Energy Alliance (SHEA), started working with Comas Haynes of GTRI on hydrogen, where they brought together the ecosystem that was responsible for at least three hydrogen hub efforts in the South East.

Scott's work related to energy in his own words: 
My career has always related to energy even when I didn’t notice it. I started out in DNA microchips where we tried to understand the various aspects of fluidics (mass transport, thermal, and surface science) that influenced efficient separations. Using the tools from those efforts I transitioned into optical sensor development to monitor trace gases from the gas-solid catalyst interface in a fuel cell electrode to an unknown-unknown contaminant that might cause a failure mode in a weapons system. Over the past decade, my work in energy has focused namely on building partnerships in industrial manufacturing consortia (ManufacturingUSA Institutes) where I helped form both CESMII and RAPID and then focusing on developing technologies to solve the hydrogen storage and delivery challenges through either more efficient, energy dense solid-state storage or using electro magnetics to efficiently provide heat to catalysts to decompose a hydrogen carrier or plastic.

Marta Hatzell is a professor of mechanical engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. Prior to starting at Georgia Tech in August of 2015, she was a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Material Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign. During her post doc, she worked in the Braun Research Group on research at the interface between colloid science and electrochemistry. She completed her Ph.D. at Penn state University in the Logan Research Group. Her Ph.D. explored environmental technology for energy generation and water treatment. During graduate school she was an NSF and PEO Graduate Research Fellow. 

Currently her research group focuses on exploring the sustainable catalysis and separations, with applications spanning from solar energy conversion to desalination. She is an active member of the American Chemical Society, the Electrochemical Society, ASEEP, and ASME. Hatzell was awarded the NSF Early CAREER award in 2019 for her work on distributed solar-fertilizers, attended the 2019 US Frontiers of Engineering Symposium through the National Academy of Engineering, and was awarded the 2020 Sloan Research Fellowships in Chemistry.