Dr. Fan Zhang received her Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering and M.S. in Statistics from UTK in 2019. She is the recipient of the 2021 Ted Quinn Early Career Award from the American Nuclear Society and joined the Woodruff School in July, 2021. She is actively involved with multiple international collaborations on improving nuclear cybersecurity through the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the DOE Office of International Nuclear Security (INS). Dr. Zhang’s research primarily focuses on the cybersecurity of nuclear facilities, online monitoring & fault detection using data analytics methods, instrumentation & control, and nuclear systems modeling & simulation. She has developed multiple testbeds using both simulators and physical components to investigate different aspects of cybersecurity as well as process health management.

Dr. Felix J. Herrmann is Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Energy and a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology with appointments in the Schools of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Computational Science and Engineering, and Electrical and Computer Engineering. Dr. Herrmann will be the 2019 Distinguished Lecturer of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG). 

Dr. Herrmann holds a M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Engineering Physics from the Delft University of Technology. He completed his postdoctoral studies at Stanford University and MIT before becoming a professor at the University of British Columbia's Department of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. He joined the faculty of the Georgia Institute of Technology in October 2017. 

During his career, Dr. Herrmann has worked on the development of the next-generation of industrial acquisition and computational imaging technologies designed to improve the image quality in complex geological areas at vastly reduced costs and environmental impact. Aside from driving innovations, by leveraging recent developments in the mathematical and computational sciences, Dr. Herrmann has extensive experience working with industry. At the University of British Columbia, he was the founder and director of the Seismic Laboratory for Imaging and Modelling (SLIM), which hosted the industry Consortium SINBAD. Under his guidance, SLIM became a world leader in the successful integration of transformative scientific developments, such as compressive sensing, randomized linear algebra, and machine learning, into innovative approaches that tackle the most challenging imaging problems. With his move to the Georgia Institute of Technology, Dr. Herrmann plans to broaden his research program to include other imaging modalities. Dr. Herrmann was a long program participant at UCLA's Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics in the Fall of 2004 and has been involved in public-private partnerships around the world. He serves on the editorial board of Geophysical Prospecting and on the SEG Research Committee.

Benoit Montreuil is the Coca-Cola Material Handling & Distribution Chair and Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. He also serves as Director of the Physical Internet Center and Executive Director of the Supply Chain & Logistics Institute. 

Dr. Montreuil is leading the International Physical Internet Initiative, engaging academic, industry and government leaders worldwide into research and innovation projects on smart, hyperconnected and sustainable logistics, supply chains, transportation, businesses and regions. 

His main research interests generically lie in developing concepts, methodologies and technologies for creating, optimizing, transforming and enabling businesses, supply chains and value creation networks to thrive in a fast evolving hyperconnected world. 

He stands at the crossroads of industrial and systems engineering; operations research; computer sciences; operations, logistics, supply chain, strategic management; and sustainability science. His research builds mostly on a synthesis of optimization modeling and mathematical programming, discrete & agent-based simulation modeling, systems science & design theory. 

Dr. Montreuil is a world-renowned scientist who has introduced in collaboration with students and colleagues an imposing set of paradigm-challenging leading edge contributions through nearly four decades of research, shared through 250 scientific publications, 250 scientific communications and numerous keynote speeches at international scientific and professional conferences. He has extensive advisory, entrepreneurial and collaborative research experience with industry and government. 

Through his career, he has received numerous awards, recently including DC Velocity’s Rainmaker of the Year and The Physical Internet Pioneer Award for his outstanding and inspiring vision. 

From 2000 to 2014, Dr. Montreuil has held the Canada Research Chair in Business Engineering. He is a founding member of the CIRRELT Interuniversity Research Centre on Enterprise Networks, Logistics and Transportation. He is also past president of the College-Industry Council on Material Handling Education and its Liaison to the Board of Governors of MHI, the North American industry association of material handling, logistics and supply chain solutions and technology providers. 

Dr. Montreuil graduated in 1978 from the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR). He earned a master’s and a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Georgia Tech in 1980 and 1982 respectively. After serving on the industrial engineering faculty of UQTR and Purdue University, from 1988 to 2014, he was a Professor of operations and decisions systems in the faculty of Business Administration at Université Laval in Quebec City, Canada.

Ben Emerson completed his Ph. D. in Aerospace Engineering from Georgia Tech in August, 2013. Since then, Ben has worked as a Research Engineer at the Ben T. Zinn Combustion Lab at Georgia Tech. Ben’s research portfolio includes projects on combustion instabilities, alternative fuels, and combustion system R&D with a core focus and motivation of cleaner combustion. Ben’s research primarily consists of three core competencies, which are experimental combustion system development, combustor diagnostics, and combustion theory and modeling. Ben’s combustion system development work spans a wide variety of applications, from small lab-scale burners to combustor rigs that test full-scale gas turbine combustor hardware. His combustor diagnostics work encompasses the state of the art optical diagnostic techniques for reacting flow field measurements and imaging, and aims to implement those techniques in both laboratory-scale and large-scale rig tests. Finally, Ben’s combustion theory and modeling work is geared towards analysis of experimental datasets, development of reduced-order engineering tools, and the development of a suite of hydrodynamic stability analysis tools. Together, these core competencies form the pillars of Ben’s research, which facilitates the design of cleaner-burning combustion systems.

Bojan Petrovic joined Georgia Tech in 2007 as a Professor. Prior to that he acquired industrial experience as a Fellow Scientist in Westinghouse Science and Technology where his primary responsibility was as the project Deputy Director on the development of the advanced, modular IRIS reactor.

Dr. Petrovic's current research focuses on advanced reactor design, nuclear fuel cycle and waste management, and related modeling and simulation methods.

Over the past ten years, he has been involved in the development of the IRIS Reactor, within an international team of 19 organizations from ten countries. IRIS is an advanced medium power (335 MWe) integral-type PWR, based on proven light-water technology, but incorporating many innovative solutions that improve its operation, safety, security, and economics. Advanced reactors have the potential to offer full benefit in synergy with advanced fuel cycles. Recently, the focus of this research is shifting to judicious selection of fuel cycle, reprocessing, and partition and transmutation options, which  may significantly reduce the radiotoxicity of spent nuclear fuel and enable its safe and economical ultimate disposal.

Novel reactor designs and advanced fuel cycles pose new challenges and require improved, more accurate methods of modeling and simulations. Dr. Petrovic's interest is in developing approaches for using Monte Carlo and hybrid deterministic-Monte Carlo methods (for eigenvalue as well as shielding applications) in a way that will be practical and relevant for analysis of complex nuclear systems.

Dr. Petrovic has a strong interest in interdisciplinary areas, and his research projects have included collaboration related to industrial and medical applications of nuclear technology. His recent research in computational medical physics focuses on proton therapy. His research has been sponsored by the Department of Energy, industry and utilities.

Alan Erera is a Manhattan Associates/Dabbiere Chair and the Associate Chair for Research in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. He is also the faculty director for the M.S. in Supply Chain Engineering program, Co-Director for Global Transportation in the Supply Chain & Logistics Institute, and Co-Executive Director of the Georgia Tech Panama Logistics Innovation & Research Center.

His research focuses on transportation and logistics systems planning and control, with an emphasis on planning under uncertainty and real-time operational control.  His recent work has addressed dynamic vehicle routing systems for same-day distribution; resilient logistics network design for food supply chains; service network design, linehaul equipment management, and driver scheduling for consolidation freight carriers; robust container fleet management for global shipping companies; and robust and flexible vehicle routing system planning and control for distribution companies. He has written extensively in these subject areas, and has delivered over 100 technical presentations and invited lectures. His research program has been supported by federal agencies (DHS, USDOT, NSF) and major U.S. freight carriers and manufacturing firms.

He received his B.S. Eng. from Princeton University, and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Dan Kotlyar is an Assistant Professor in the Nuclear and Radiological Engineering, G.W.W. School of Mechanical Engineering. He received his B.Sc. in Engineering in 2008, MSc in Nuclear Engineering in 2010, and PhD in Nuclear Engineering in 2013 from Ben-Gurion University, Israel. In 2014, he joined the University of Cambridge as a Research Associate in the Engineering Design Center. In 2014, he was elected as a Research Fellow at Jesus College. He is the recipient of the NRC Faculty Development Fellowship. Dr. Kotlyar’s research interests include development of numerical methods and algorithms for coupled Monte Carlo, fuel depletion and thermal hydraulic codes. In particular, he specializes in applying these methods to the analysis of advanced reactor systems. Dr. Kotlyar’s research also focuses on optimizing the performance of various fuel cycles in terms of fuel utilization, proliferation, and cost. Dr. Kotlyar profoundly believes in education through research and thus integrates practical reactor system design into his lectures.

Dr. Garimella began at Tech in August 2003 as an Associate Professor and Director of the Sustainable Thermal Systems Laboratory. Prior, he was an Associate Professor at Iowa State University, an Assistant and Associate Professor at Western Michigan University, a Research Scientist at Battelle Memorial Institute, and a Senior Engineer at General Motors.

Materials for membranes, sorbents, and barrier packaging applications rely upon the same fundamental principles. Thermodynamically controlled partitioning of a penetrant, such as carbon dioxide into a membrane, sorbent or barrier packaging layer is the first step in the transport process. If the material is a polymer, cooperative motions of the matrix enable diffusive motion by the penetrant. In highly rigid carbon molecular sieves and zeolites, motion of the matrix is negligible, and penetrant transport is governed by the relative size of pre-existing pores and the penetrant molecule.

Koros’s group is a leader in developing advanced materials for membranes, sorbents, and barrier applications by optimization materials to either promote or retard transport of specific components. For instance, for a chosen penetrant such as carbon dioxide, the Koros group can create a barrier, a selective membrane, or a sorbent by materials engineering. Work is also underway in the Koros group to form “mixed matrix composite” materials comprised of blends of metal organic framework or other specialty components within the matrix of a conventional polymer. This approach allows further optimization of transport properties without sacrificing the ease of processing associated with conventional polymers.

Effects due to non equilibrium thermodynamic and non-Fickian transport phenomena are additional topics his group studies. Long lived conditioning effects due to exposure of membranes and barriers to elevated concentrations of certain penetrants are typical of such non equilibrium phenomena. Protracted aging of glassy polymers, carbons, and inorganic membranes after formation or conditioning treatments also are of interest to his research group. In many cases, these effects seem to defy logic—until one realizes that an expanded set of rules governs these out-of-equilibrium materials.

Shannon Yee began as an Assistant Professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering in January 2014. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of California - Berkeley under the supervision of Prof. Arun Majumdar, Prof. Chris Dames, and Prof. Rachel Segalman. In 2010, he was named the first fellow to the U.S. Dept. of Energy 's Advanced Research Project Agency - Energy (ARPA-E) assisting to form the agency in its inaugural year. In 2008 he was awarded the prestigious Hertz Fellowship to support his graduate studies and research in energy. Yee received his Master 's degree in Nuclear Engineering in 2008 from The Ohio State University where he was a U.S. Dept. of Energy Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative Fellow. He received his Bachelor 's degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2007, also from The Ohio State University.