2025 Georgia Tech Symposium & Workshop

Prof. Stebner works at the intersection of manufacturing, machine learning, materials, and mechanics. He directs the Georgia Artificial Intelligence Manufacturing (GA-AIM) economic development corridor and is leading the design and implementation of the Georgia Tech AI Manufacturing Pilot Facility. Prof. Stebner joined the Georgia Tech faculty as an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering in 2020. He also served as the Deputy Editor for the journal Additive Manufacturing. Previously, he was the Rowlinson Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at the Colorado School of Mines (2013 – 2020), a postdoctoral scholar at the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories of the California Institute of Technology (2012 – 2013), a Lecturer in the Segal Design Institute at Northwestern University (2009 – 2012), a Research Scientist at Telezygology Inc. establishing manufacturing and “internet of things” technologies for shape memory alloy-secured latching devices (2008-2009), a Research Fellow at the NASA Glenn Research Center developing smart materials technologies for morphing aircraft structures (2006 – 2008), and a Mechanical Engineer at the Electric Device Corporation in Canfield, OH developing manufacturing and automation technologies for the circuit breaker industry (1995 – 2000). He has won numerous awards, including a National Science Foundation (USA) CAREER award (2014), the Colorado School of Mines Researcher of the Year Award (2017), a Long-term Invitational Fellowship for Research from the Japan Society for the Preservation of Science (JSPS, 2019), and the Associate Professor Research Award from the G.W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech (2023).

Dr. Matthew McDowell joined Georgia Tech in the fall of 2015 as an assistant professor with a joint appointment in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Materials Science and Engineering. Prior to this appointment, he was a postdoctoral scholar in the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. Dr. McDowell received his Ph.D. in 2013 from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University. Dr. McDowell’s research group (https://mtmcdowell.gatech.edu/)focuses on understanding how materials for energy storage change and transform during operation, and they use this knowledge to engineer batteries and other energy storage devices for improved performance. These technological advances impact society by enabling batteries with lower cost, higher energy density, and enhanced sustainability, opening the door to widespread vehicle electrification and use of renewable energy. Current projects in the group are focused on i) solid-state batteries, ii) lithium-ion and sodium-ion batteries, iii) low-temperature battery chemistries, iv) new battery materials with enhanced sustainability, and v) grid storage technologies. Dr. McDowell is the co-director of the Georgia Tech Advanced Battery Center (https://batteries.research.gatech.edu/).

Dr. Isaiah Bolden is an oceanographer and biogeochemist who joined the faculty at Georgia Tech in Fall 2022. Despite growing up in landlocked Nashville, Tennessee, he’s found a way to have a coastal-focused career. His research is primarily aimed at understanding the health and impacts of climate change on modern and ancient coral reef ecosystems and other coastal environments. Dr. Bolden accomplishes this by designing and monitoring novel chemical proxies (or “clues”) that can be used to fingerprint changes in the community structure of these environments as a function of time and compounding stressors (like global warming and ocean acidification). He also is committed to community-engaged environmental research projects that promote community resilience and increase educational accessibility and diversity in the geosciences. He holds a BA in Earth in Oceanographic Science from Bowdoin College and an MS and PhD in Oceanography from the University of Washington.

Dr. Henry (Pete) S. La Pierre is an Associate Professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a joint faculty appointee at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. His group studies how collective magnetic, physical, and chemical properties arise from electron (de)localization phenomena in f-element systems. These studies include the development of solid-state and solution methodologies for the synthesis of novel lanthanide and actinide (Th – Am) materials and complexes. These synthetic efforts are paired with synchrotron and neutron spectroscopies and physical property studies to break down the challenge of understanding the electronic structure of f-element systems. Dr. La Pierre completed his undergraduate studies at Harvard University, where he worked with Prof. Jared Shaw at the Broad Institute on the synthesis of antibiotics and with Prof. Masahiro Murakami at Kyoto University on main group organometallics. His graduate work, with Professors John Arnold, Robert Bergman, and Dean Toste at the University of California, Berkeley, focused on the development of a Z-selective alkyne semihydrogenation catalyst. Following graduation, he studied ligand control of reactive low- and high-valent uranium complexes as a postdoctoral scholar with Prof. Karsten Meyer at FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg. He then worked as a Director’s Postdoctoral Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory with Dr. Stosh Kozimor on ligand K-edge X-ray absorption spectroscopic studies of transuranic complexes. In addition to receiving the Beckman Young Investigator award in 2018, Dr. La Pierre received the NSF CAREER Award, the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, and the Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award, and the ACS Petroleum Research Fund Doctoral New Investigator Award. His group’s research is also supported by the DOE Heavy Element Chemistry Program and the DOE Quantum Information Science Program. He is the Director of the recently founded NNSA Transuranic Chemistry Center of Research Excellence (TRU-CoRE).

Elsa Qoku is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, USA. She obtained her Doctoral degree from Technical University of Freiberg, in Germany. Her dissertation focused on the characterization and quantification of phase assemblage in cementitious systems. After her PhD, she moved to Denmark where she worked as a visiting researcher at the group of Solid-State NMR of Inorganic Materials at Aarhus University. As a young scientist, Elsa’s research interest revolves around understanding the microstructure, hydration mechanism and development of hydrates in a wide range of cementitious systems. She has expertise in advanced synchrotron characterization techniques coupled with thermodynamic modelling.

Eric M. Vogel is currently Hightower Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Executive Director of the Institute for Materials. Prior to joining GT in August 2011, he was Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Electrical Engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) where he was also Associate Director of the Texas Analog Center of Excellence and led UTD’s portion of the Southwest Academy for Nanoelectronics. Prior to joining UTD in August of 2006, he was leader of the CMOS and Novel Devices Group and founded the Nanofab at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He received the Ph. D. degree in 1998 in electrical engineering from North Carolina State University and the B. S. degree in 1994 in electrical engineering from Penn State University. Dr. Vogel’s research interests relate to materials and devices for future electronics. He has authored over 200 refereed publications and given over 90 invited talks.

Hans-Conrad zur Loye is the David W. Robinson Palmetto Professor and Carolina Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of South Carolina; he holds a joint appointment at Savannah River National Laboratory. He received his Bachelor of Science Degree at Brown University in 1983 and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1988 under the supervision of Prof. Angela Stacy. He spent one year as a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University with Prof. Duward Shriver before starting as an assistant professor in the Chemistry Department of MIT in 1989. In 1996 he moved to the University of South Carolina. He is currently the director of the DOE EFRC, the Center for Hierarchical Waste Form Materials, where his group works on the synthesis of new complex oxides and fluorides for sequestering actinide elements. He has published over 500 papers and reviews. He received the ACS administered Exxon Award in Solid State Chemistry in 1994, the University of South Carolina Educational Foundation Award for Research in Science, Mathematics and Engineering in 2006, and the IPMI Henry J. Albert Award in 2009. He was elected to the rank of Fellow of the AAAS in 2009. He has been very active in the American Chemical Society and was the chair of the Solid State Chemistry subdivision of the Division of Inorganic Chemistry. He has organized multiple symposia at national ACS meetings, and he was the Technical Sessions Chair, 2016 South East Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society (SERMACS). He was named the South Carolina Section of the ACS “Outstanding Chemist” in 2010 and was elected to the rank of Fellow of the ACS in 2011. He received the Southern Chemist Award in 2011, the University of South Carolina Trustee Professorship Award in 2012, and the Charles H. Stone Award from the ACS Carolina Piedmont Section in 2017. In 2016 he received the South Carolina Governor's Award for Excellence in Scientific Research. He is an associate editor for the Journal of Solid State Chemistry since 1997 and a past editor for the Journal of Alloys and Compound. He is a member and past President of the South Carolina Academy of Science, which promotes science education in South Carolina.

Keisuke Saito is a Director of Application Science and holds a PhD material science. He has been focused on X-ray diffraction (XRD) since 1996. He has extensive experience in the application field including battery, semiconductor, photoelectric, piezoelectric, and ferroelectric. He studied characterization of piezo- and ferroelectric materials using XRD at Tokyo Institute of Technology for his PhD. He enjoys using the skills he learned to measure and analyze functional powder and thin film materials. In the webinar, he helps professionals how to find out the best configurations for XRD depending on targets.

Angela holds a PhD from Rice University and has been with Rigaku for since January 2002. She started in the Macromolecular Crystallography Applications lab focusing on X-ray techniques to study structural biology. She has gained expertise in a number of X-ray methods in her tenure at Rigaku, including small angle X-ray scattering and X-ray computed tomography. Angela likes working with customers to find the best fit for their samples while addressing their specific experimental questions.

Jessica obtained her Ph.D. from UCLA, where she specialized in organic synthesis and the use of electron diffraction to determine the structures of small molecules. Prior to joining Rigaku, she was a staff scientist at Caltech, focusing on high throughput analysis of natural products and pharmaceuticals using electron diffraction.

Ryan holds an M.S. from California State University, Fullerton in Organic Chemistry and has been with Rigaku since 2013. He started in the X-ray Fluorescence Applications Lab and has worked on a broad range of materials. Experience includes working as an organic chemist with EDXRF, WDXRF, NMR, DCP, ICP, IR, GC, Mass Spec, Particle Size, Rheology instrumentation in the semiconductor, geothermal and petrochemical R&D industries. He enjoys helping customers find preparation techniques and instrumentation that suit their needs for elemental analysis.