Zoubeida Ounaies is a Tunisian mechanical engineer, whose research involves nanocomposites, smart materials, and piezoelectricity in polymers. She is a professor of mechanical engineering at Pennsylvania State University, affiliated with the Penn State Intercollege Graduate Degree Program in Materials Science and Engineering [1] and with the Institute of Energy and the Environment. [2] At Penn State, she is director of the Convergence Center for Living Multifunctional Material Systems, [3] [4] and acting director of the Materials Research Institute. [4]
Ounaies grew up in Tunisia, the daughter of an engineer. [5] [3] She went to Pennsylvania State University for her undergraduate and graduate education, [5] funded by the Tunisia Technology Transfer Program of the United States Agency for International Development, [6] and completed her Ph.D. in 1996. [7]
After postdoctoral research at NASA's Langley Research Center from 1997 to 2001, she returned to Penn State as a faculty member in 2001. [5] She moved to Texas A&M University in 2005, but returned to Penn State again in 2011. [7]
Ounaies is an ASME Fellow, elected in 2016. [4] [8] She is also a Fellow of SPIE, the International Society for Optics and Photonics. [4] [9]
Ronald "Ron" Michael Sega is an American former astronaut who is professor of systems engineering and Vice President for Energy and the Environment at the Colorado State University Research Foundation, a non-profit advocacy organization supporting CSU. He is also the Vice President and Enterprise Executive for Energy and Environment at Ohio State University. From August 2005 to August 2007, he served as Under Secretary of the Air Force. He is a retired major general in the United States Air Force and a former NASA astronaut. Sega was born in Cleveland, Ohio, he is of Slovene origin. He was married to fellow astronaut Bonnie J. Dunbar. He is now married to Ann Sega and they have two sons. He has lived in both Northfield, Ohio and Colorado Springs.
Naomi J. Halas is the Stanley C. Moore Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and professor of biomedical engineering, chemistry and physics at Rice University. She is also the founding director of Rice University Laboratory for Nanophotonics, and the Smalley-Curl Institute. She invented the first nanoparticle with tunable plasmonic resonances, which are controlled by their shape and structure, and has won numerous awards for her pioneering work in the field of nanophotonics and plasmonics. She was also part of a team that developed the first dark pulse soliton in 1987 while working for IBM.
The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) is a council, chartered in each administration with a broad mandate to advise the president of the United States on science and technology. The current PCAST was established by Executive Order 13226 on September 30, 2001, by George W. Bush, was re-chartered by Barack Obama's April 21, 2010, Executive Order 13539, by Donald Trump's October 22, 2019, Executive Order 13895, and by Joe Biden's February 1, 2021, Executive Order 14007.
Nader Engheta is an Iranian-American scientist. He has made pioneering contributions to the fields of metamaterials, transformation optics, plasmonic optics, nanophotonics, graphene photonics, nano-materials, nanoscale optics, nano-antennas and miniaturized antennas, physics and reverse-engineering of polarization vision in nature, bio-inspired optical imaging, fractional paradigm in electrodynamics, and electromagnetics and microwaves.
Vijay Kumar is an Indian roboticist and UPS foundation professor in the School of Engineering & Applied Science with secondary appointments in computer and information science and electrical and systems engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, and became the new Dean of Penn Engineering on 1 July 2015.
Gisele Bennett was a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Director of the GTRI Electro-Optical Systems Laboratory at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). She also founded the Logistics and Maintenance Applied Research Center (LandMARC) at GTRI.
Aylin Yener holds the Roy and Lois Chope Chair in engineering at Ohio State University, and she is currently the President of the IEEE Information Theory Society. Dr. Yener is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Professor of Integrated Systems Engineering, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, Affiliated Faculty at the Sustainability Institute, and Affiliated Faculty at the Translational Data Analytics Institute, all at Ohio State University.
Kenji Uchino is an American electronics engineer, physicist, academic, inventor and industry executive. He is currently a Professor of Electrical Engineering at Pennsylvania State University, where he also directs the International Center for Actuators and Transducers at Materials Research Institute. He is the former Associate Director at The US Office of Naval Research – Global Tokyo Office.
Manijeh Razeghi is an Iranian-American scientist in the fields of semiconductors and optoelectronic devices. She is a pioneer in modern epitaxial techniques for semiconductors such as low pressure metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD), vapor phase epitaxy (VPE), molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), GasMBE, and MOMBE. These techniques have enabled the development of semiconductor devices and quantum structures with higher composition consistency and reliability, leading to major advancement in InP and GaAs based quantum photonics and electronic devices, which were at the core of the late 20th century optical fiber telecommunications and early information technology.
Muyinatu "Bisi" A. Lediju Bell is the John C. Malone Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University. She is director of the Photoacoustic and Ultrasonic Systems Engineering Laboratory.
Katherine T. Faber is an American materials scientist and one of the world's foremost experts in continuum mechanics, ceramic engineering, and material strengthening. Faber is the Simon Ramo Professor of Materials Science at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Currently, Faber is the faculty representative for the Materials Science option at Caltech. She is also an adjunct professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University.
Joycelyn Harrison is an African-American engineer who is Associate Dean of the College of Aeronautics and Engineering at Kent State University. In 2006 she was awarded the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal. Her research considers the development of novel piezoelectric materials.
Carmen S. Menoni is an Argentine-American physicist who is the University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University. Her research considers oxide materials for interference coatings and spectrometry imaging. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, American Physical Society, The Optical Society and SPIE. Menoni served as the President of the IEEE Photonics Society from 2020 to 2021.
Douglas Henry Werner is an American scientist and engineer. He holds the John L. and Genevieve H. McCain Chair Professorship in the Penn State Department of Electrical Engineering and is the director of the Penn State University Computational Electromagnetics and Antennas Research Laboratory. Werner holds 20 patents and has over 1020 publications. He is the author/co-author of 7 books and 30 book chapters. According to Google Scholar, his h-index is 74 with more than 23,900 citations. He is internationally recognized for his expertise in electromagnetics, antenna design, optical metamaterials and metamaterial-enabled devices as well as for the development/application of inverse-design techniques.
Kon-Well Wang is an American academic and engineer, best known for his research work in structural dynamics, especially in the emerging field of adaptive structures & material systems, with applications in vibration & noise controls. acoustic & elastic wave tailoring, shape morphing & deployment, energy harvesting, structural health monitoring, and vehicle and robotic system dynamics. He is the Stephen P. Timoshenko Professor of Mechanical Engineering (ME) and Director of the Structural Dynamics and Controls Lab at the University of Michigan (U-M).
Jürgen W. Czarske is a German electrical engineer and a measurement system technician. He is the director of the TU Dresden Biomedical Computational Laser Systems competence center and a co-opted professor of physics.
Francine Battaglia is an American aerospace engineer specializing in computational fluid dynamics, including the study of fluidized beds and of fire, fire whirls, and flame spread. Her other research interests include ventilation and energy usage in architectural design, and alternative and renewable energy systems. She is professor and chair in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering of the University at Buffalo, where she directs the Computational Research for Energy Systems and Transport Laboratory.
Mary Irene Frecker is an American mechanical engineer whose research focuses on topology optimization of adaptive structures, compliant mechanisms, and self-folding origami mechanisms, with applications including the design of medical devices. She is a professor of mechanical and biomechanical engineering in the Penn State College of Engineering, Riess Chair of Engineering, head of the mechanical engineering department, and director of the Penn State Center for Biodevices.
Alison B. Flatau is an American aerospace engineer whose research involves smart materials and magnetostriction, changes in the physical shape of materials under magnetic fields, and in the application of nanowires built from these materials in controlling the flight of micro air vehicles. She is a professor and department chair of the Department of Aerospace Engineering in the A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park.