Lauren Garten joined the School of Material Science and Engineering as an assistant professor in Fall 2021. Her group focuses on developing new materials for energy and electronic applications, particularly at the nexus between ferroelectricity, ferromagnetism, electronics, and photovoltaics. 

Lauren received her B.S. in ceramic engineering from the Missouri University of Science and Technology. She then went on to earn a Ph.D. in material science from the Pennsylvania State University for her work on ferroelectric, piezoelectric, and dielectric synthesis and characterization with Prof. Susan Trolier-McKinstry. She then became a post-doc at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory working on metastable materials for energy applications. After a very short stint as a material scientist at Sandia National Laboratory, she won the NRC Research Associateship from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Math which was hosted at the U.S. Naval Research Lab (NRL). She then received the Jerome and Isabella Karle Distinguished Scholar Fellowship from NRL to work on lead-free multiferroic materials and devices.

Scott Sinquefield completed his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering in 1998 at Oregon State University. He spent three years working with the Multi-Fuel Combustion Group at the Combustion Research Facility at Sandia National Labs (Livermore); where he performed the experimental portion of his thesis research. He joined the Chemical Recovery group at IPST in 1998 and was lead.engineer in the construction and operation of the Pressurize Entrained Flow Reactor facility. He now leads the research program on black liquor gasification. He has extensive experience in the design and construction of pilot research reactors and control systems. He also has expertise in boiler fire-side fouling and thermodynamic modeling of aqueous electrolyte systems.

Robert Harris' background is in semiconductors and microelectronics. He serves as research faculty at the Georgia Tech Research Institute in the Electro-Optical Systems Laboratory and teach in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech. His research focus is on photonic integrated circuits, heterogeneous integration, electronic warfare, and RF electronics.

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.

Shkina Halbert joined IDEaS in 2016 to provide Administrative support. In 2019, she was promoted to IDEaS Program & Operations Manager. She has over eleven years of experience in the administrative field. She previously work at a successful immigration law firm that assisted the top partners of the company. She primarily handles planning and coordinating workshops/conferences, department HR duties, department operations, travel and various other tasks to support the team. She holds a Masters in Business Administration and Bachelor of Arts in history.

Dr. Lewis-Strickland is a program planning and implementation professional with over 8 years of experience directing programs that build leadership, professional, and skills capacity for students, alumni, and community members. Currently, she is the Program Coordinator for the South Big Data Hub in the Institute for Data Engineering and Sciences. In addition, she manages the operations of initiatives that support broadening participation in data science through community consortium building. She earned her Doctorate of Education in Organizational Leadership, emphasizing Higher Education Leadership from Grand Canyon University. Her dissertation empowered black women to share their leadership resilience experiences to inspire and support aspiring black women leaders. In addition, Dr. Lewis-Strickland is a member of numerous professional organizations such as the International Leadership Association and the Network for Change and Continuous Innovation.

Charmain M. Alston is the senior grants administrator for IDEaS. She joined the team in 2017 with more than 26 years of experience in the federal government, and 18 years of experience with proposal and financial administration at the National Science Foundation's Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate. Charmain has a BBS with a concentration in Acquisition and Contract Management.

Sriram Chockalingam is a Research Scientist at the Institute for Data Engineering and Science (IDEaS). He develops high performance computing algorithms and implementations for IDEaS research efforts and collaborations. Dr. Chockalingam's research interests focus on development of sequential and parallel algorithms for network reverse engineering in systems biology, Bayesian network structure learning and approximate sequence matching with applications in Bioinformatics. He has over a decade of experience in developing software in both industry and academia targeted towards solving data science problems.

Sherri joined the Business Analytics Center at Scheller College of Business in August 2017 as the Corporate Engagement Manager. She is responsible for identifying, developing and maintaining corporate partnerships that drive collaboration between the Business Analytics Center and the analytics industry. 

Before joining the Business Analytics Center, Sherri worked as a Corporate Relations Manager for the Georgia Tech Master of Science in Analytics Program. Prior to joining Georgia Tech, she built a 25+ year accomplished track record in business development, corporate relations, program management and fund raising. Her extensive experience spans multiple industry sectors in Technology, Consumer Products, Education and Nonprofit.

Santanu S. Dey is A. Russell Chandler III Professor and associate chair of graduate studies in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Dey holds a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University. Prior to joining Georgia Tech, he worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE) of the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. 

Dr. Dey's research interests are in the area of non convex optimization, and in particular mixed integer linear and nonlinear programming. His research is partly motivated by applications of non convex optimization arising in areas such as electrical power engineering, process engineering, civil engineering, logistics, and statistics. Dr. Dey has served as the vice chair for Integer Programming for INFORMS Optimization Society (2011-2013) and has served on the program committees of Mixed Integer Programming Workshop 2013 and Integer Programming and Combinatorial Optimization 2017, 2020. He currently serves on the editorial board of Computational Optimization and Applications, MOS-SIAM book series on Optimization, is an associate editor for Mathematics of Operations Research, Mathematical Programming A, and SIAM Journal on Optimization. He has been as associate editor for INFORMS Journal on Computing and an area editor for Mathematical Programming C.