Richard Simmons is currently a Principal Research Engineer and Fellow at Georgia Tech’s Strategic Energy Institute (SEI) where he directs cross-cutting energy projects with an emphasis on clean electric power, vehicle efficiency and alternative fuels. Simmons is also director of the Energy Policy and Innovation Center (EPICenter) whose objective is to perform research and outreach in energy policy and innovation with a distinctively regional perspective. He is also a part-time instructor in Georgia Tech’s Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, with a specialization in design, mechatronics and thermal systems. 

Simmons received his BS from Georgia Tech, and MS and Ph.D. from Purdue, all in Mechanical Engineering. He is a licensed professional engineer (PE) with more than 20 years of RD&D experience in automotive, advanced materials, and alternative energy and fuels. 

From 2009 to 2012, he served a prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science S&T (Science and Technology) Policy Fellowship at the U.S. Department of State, providing technical analysis on international policy issues related to renewable energy. He has recently authored numerous publications including an open-access eBook entitled “Understanding the Global Energy Crisis” (Purdue Press, 2014), several book chapters and journal articles related to advanced energy technologies, transportation energy technology, and future energy policy strategies.

Valerie Thomas is the Anderson-Interface Chair of Natural Systems and Professor in the H. Milton School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, with a joint appointment in the School of Public Policy. 

Dr. Thomas's research interests are energy and materials efficiency, sustainability, industrial ecology, technology assessment, international security, and science and technology policy. Current research projects include low carbon transportation fuels, carbon capture, building construction, and electricity system development. Dr. Thomas is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and of the American Physical Society. She has been an American Physical Society Congressional Science Fellow, a Member of the U.S. EPA Science Advisory Board, and a Member of the USDA/DOE Biomass Research and Development Technical Advisory Committee. 

She has worked at Princeton University in the Princeton Environmental Institute and in the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies, and at Carnegie Mellon University in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy.

Dr. Thomas received a B. A. in physics from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Cornell University.

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.

Dylan Brewer joined the faculty at the School of Economics in 2019. He received his PhD in Economics with a dual major in Environmental Science and Policy from Michigan State University in May 2019 as well as a Master of Arts degree in Economics from the same institution in 2016. Prior to his graduate studies, Dylan completed a Bachelor of Arts degree with majors in Economics and International Relations at the University of Virginia in 2014. Dylan's research uses the tools of applied econometrics and machine learning to answer questions in energy and environmental economics. He has published research on household energy consumption, the economics of thermostat settings, recycling, electricity demand, machine learning methodology, and air quality among other topics. He teaches courses on environmental economics at the graduate and undergraduate level, and his Principles of Microeconomics course has won awards at Georgia Tech.

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.

Dr. Laura Taylor is Chair of the School of Economics at Georgia Tech. Her research focuses on policy evaluation and the valuation of natural resources and the environment. Recent applications include improving benefits estimation for policies designed to reduce human mortality; examining household responses to water conservation policies; evaluating the benefits of hazardous waste site cleanup for neighboring communities, and evaluating the impact of offshore wind energy on coastal tourism. Her research has received funding from a variety of sources including the US EPA, USDA, US Department of Interior and the National Science Foundation.  She is a Fellow of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists and has held numerous advisory board positions.  Prior to joining the faculty at Georgia Tech in 2018, Dr. 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). 

Dr. Casey Wichman is an applied microeconomist working on issues at the intersection of environmental and public economics. His research focuses on how people interact with the natural and built environment, and what that behavior reveals about the value of environmental amenities. His research spans water and energy demand, valuation of environmental resources and infrastructure, urban transportation, public goods provision, demand for outdoor recreation, and climate change. Methodologically, he relies on the application of program evaluation techniques, often using large micro-data sets, to estimate causal effects of environmental policies on economic behavior. 

Prior to joining Georgia Tech, Dr. Wichman served as the Research Director of the Energy and Environment Lab at the University of Chicago and as a Fellow at Resources for the Future, an environmental economics think-tank in Washington, DC. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in 2015, and his doctoral work earned outstanding doctoral dissertation awards from both the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists and the Association of Agricultural and Applied Economists.

Maryam Saeedifard received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran, in 1998 and 2002, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Toronto, Canada, in 2008, all in electrical engineering.

From 2007 to 2008, she was with ABB Corporate Research Center, Dattwil-Baden, Switzerland, working in the power electronic systems group. She joined Purdue University in January 2010, where she served as an assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Since January 2014, she has been on the ECE faculty at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Her main research focus has been in the area of Power Electronics and Applications of Power Electronics in Power Systems and Transportation Systems. She has served on the technical program committees of the IEEE Power Electronics Society, IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC), and IEEE Industrial Electronics Conference (IECON). She is an editor for IEEE Trans. on Sustainable Energy, IEEE Trans. on Power Delivery, and IEEE Trans. on Power Electronics.