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Adela Ben-Yakar is Harry Kent Professor in the Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering Departments at the University of Texas at Austin. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University (2000) and was a postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford and Harvard Universities in the Applied Physics Departments (2000-2004). Her research focuses on ultrafast optics, microscopy, and microfluidics for a broad range of biomedical applications. She holds several issued and pending patents, and published in high impact journals (Nature, Nature Methods, Nature Communications, Nano Letters). She is an SPIE, Optica, and AIMBE Fellow and the recipient of Fulbright, Zonta Amelia Earhart, NSF Career, Human Frontier Science Program Research, and NIH Director’s Transformative Awards.

Electronics, power electronics, and electric machines are becoming important for an array of mobility/transportation, renewable energy and energy efficiency applications. In this presentation, I will provide an introduction to NREL and my Group. Then, I will describe some challenges and opportunities for power electronics, electric machines and electric drives for mobility applications in particular. After that, I will give a brief overview of my Group’s research activities in these areas with focus on thermal management and reliability aspects.

Sreekant Narumanchi is the Group Manager of the Advanced Power Electronics and Electric Machines (APEEM) Group within the Center of Integrated Mobility Sciences at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, where he is currently in his 18th year. He leads a Group of 15 researchers focused on electro-thermal, thermal-fluids, thermo-mechanical and reliability aspects of power electronics and electric machines. This includes investigation of various cooling technologies, thermal interface materials/interfaces, interconnects, as well as reliability of these components. His broad research interests include heat transfer, power electronics and electric machines thermal management, packaging and reliability. Over the years, his Group has collaborated with numerous institutions cutting across industry, universities, national labs, and other research institutions.

Sreekant is an ASME Fellow, an IEEE Senior Member, and has published over 90 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers and book chapters. Professionally, he is active as an Associate Editor for the ASME Journal of Electronic Packaging, as an organizer for InterPACK (Topic, Track Chair, Technical Program Co-Chair, Conference General Chair) and ITherm conferences, on the ASME K-16 Committee on Heat Transfer in Electronic Equipment, as Guest Editor of the IEEE Components, Packaging, and Manufacturing Technologies Journal, on the Thermal Working Group of the IEEE Heterogeneous Integration Roadmap Committee, serving on the Scientific Advisory Board of the POETS NSF Engineering Research Center, serving on the External Advisory Board of the Washington State University School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, as well as a reviewer for numerous journals and federal agencies. He is also part of the Executive Committee of the ASME Electronic and Photonic Packaging Division.

Some of the external awards Sreekant has received include the 2022 THERMI Award, the 2020-21 Associate Editor of the Year Award from the ASME Journal of Electronic Packaging, 2018 ASME EPPD-K16 Clock Award, a 2016 R&D 100 Award, the Best Paper Award from the ASME Journal of Electronic Packaging (2003), and the ASME 2013 InterPACK Conference Outstanding Paper Award. Within NREL, he received the 2013 NREL Outstanding Business Collaboration Award, and the 2009 NREL Staff Award for Outstanding Performance. Sreekant received a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University (2003), M.S. from Washington State University (1999), and B. Tech. from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (1997), all in Mechanical Engineering.

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Chris Dames is Department Chair and Howard Penn Brown Professor of Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley, with a joint appointment at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the Materials Science Division. His research focuses on fundamental aspects of the thermal sciences at the nanoscale and other challenging regimes. He earned his PhD from MIT in 2006 under Gang Chen, following a BS and MS (under Arun Majumdar) from UC Berkeley. Prof. Dames’ recognitions include an NSF CAREER Award, DARPA Young Faculty Award, Viskanta Fellowship and heat transfer lectureship at Purdue University, and selection to the Faculty Leadership Academy at UC Berkeley.

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Dr. Roderick Jackson is the laboratory program manager for buildings research at NREL. He sets the strategic agenda for NREL's buildings portfolio, while working closely with senior laboratory management. The portfolio includes all research, development, and market implementation activities, which aim to improve the energy efficiency of building materials and practices. He also guides discussions with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Building Technologies Office to expand research ranging from grid-interactive efficient buildings to mechanical and thermal properties of building materials. He helps identify industry partnership opportunities to advance building envelope and equipment technologies. 

At NREL, Dr. Jackson was recognized as a Distinguished Member of Research Staff. In 2022, he received a Black Engineer of the Year Award (BEYA), recognized with a BEYA Professional Achievement in Government Award.

He is serving a three-year appointment to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) Research Advisory Board, which began in 2021. He has been a member of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers and has received several awards in his career, including the National GEM Consortium Alumni of the Year and Greater Knoxville Business Journal's 40 under 40. In 2022, he joined the board of directors for the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project (SWEEP).

Dr. Jackson came to NREL from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where he was the group manager for Building Envelope Systems Research. He was on the forefront of connected communities research, leading an effort that established Alabama Power’s Smart Neighborhood. Working with Southern Company and DOE, it was the first project in the southeastern United States to connect high-performance homes with a community microgrid, deploying a transactive microgrid approach.

Another of Dr. Jackson's notable industry accomplishments is a result of his role as the technical lead for the Additive Manufacturing Integrated Energy (AMIE) demonstration project at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. With his leadership, AMIE brought together experts from multiple research teams across the lab, 20 partners from industry, and DOE scientists to design, develop, and demonstrate a 3D-printed house that shares power wirelessly with a 3D-printed electric vehicle. The first-of-its-kind research was completed in just nine months.

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Dr. Hassan is a native of Raleigh, North Carolina. He earned his bachelor's degree in 1988, his master's degree in 1990, and his Doctorate in Aerospace Engineering from North Carolina State University in 1993. He is currently the Director of the Chief Research Office and serves as Sandia's Deputy Chief Research Officer. In this role, Dr. Hassan leads Sandia's research strategy development including the execution of the Laboratory Directed Research and Development program and oversees Sandia's external partnership and technology transfer programs. Dr.

Hassan has been employed at Sandia since 1993 and has managed all phases of research, development, and applications work. He has focused predominately on the thermal, fluid, and aero science technology areas helping Sandia to accomplish its national security mission.

Dr. Hassan has served in a variety of positions in research and development (R&D) in the areas of aerodynamics and aerothermodynamics of high-speed flight vehicles, drag reduction for low-speed ground transportation vehicles, and high- velocity oxygen fuel thermal sprays. He has overseen all aspects of engineering sciences R&D and applications work at Sandia. Most notably, he helped support National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in determining the cause of the Space Shuttle Columbia accident in 2003 and was part of the team that shutdown the Deepwater Horizon oil well after the explosion and spill in 2010.

Dr. Hassan is a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and serves on the Institute's Board of Trustees as the Immediate Past President (2022-2023). Previously, he served on AIAA's Board as Director and Vice President from 2008-2017, President-Elect from 2019-2020, and President from 2020-2022. He currently serves as the Chair of the AIAA Foundation Board of Trustees. In addition, Dr Hassan has served on several national review boards for the National Academies, NASA, DARPA, and Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and has participated as an external member of the NASA Engineering and Safety Center since 2004. Dr. Hassan currently serves on the North Carolina State University's Engineering Foundation Board and the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Educational Advisory Board and has served on similar boards for New Mexico State University, Texas A&M University, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of New Mexico, and the Georgia Institute of Technology. He was the 2008 recipient of the AIAA Sustained Service Award and a 2017 recipient of North Carolina State University's Distinguished Engineering Alumnus Award.

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Ankur Jain is an Associate Professor in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of Texas, Arlington. His research interests include energy conversion in Li-ion batteries, additive manufacturing, electrochemistry and theoretical heat/mass transfer. He has published 118 journal papers, and given over 62 invited talks, seminars and tutorials. His research has helped better understand key thermal transport processes in battery materials and during polymer additive manufacturing. He has also helped develop new analytical techniques for heat/mass diffusion and convection problems, including the concept of imaginary eigenvalues in certain multilayer problems. He received the UT Arlington President's Award for Excellence in Teaching (2022), UT Arlington College of Engineering Lockheed Martin Excellence in Teaching Award (2018), UT Arlington College of Engineering Outstanding Early Career Award (2017), NSF CAREER Award (2016) and the ASME EPP Division Young Engineer of the Year Award (2013). He received his Ph.D. (2007) and M.S. (2003) in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, where he received the Stanford Graduate Fellowship, and B.Tech. (2001) in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi with top honors.

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A fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) since 2014, Dr. Victor Adrian Chiriac is a co-founder and a managing partner with the Global Cooling Technology Group since 2019. He previously held technology/engineering leadership roles with Motorola (1999-2010), Qualcomm (2010 - 2018) and Futurewei USA (2018 - 2019).  Delivered innovative R&D projects, implementing new methodologies and creating feature enhancements to ensure solutions align with corporate goals. Enthusiastic leader of cross-functional teams, providing direction on advanced thermal technologies used by consumers worldwide. Dr. Chiriac was elected Chair of the ASME K-16 Electronics Cooling Committee in 2016 and was elected the Arizona and New Mexico IMAPS Chapter President in 2010. He is a leading member of the organizing committees of ASME/InterPack, ASME/ IMECE and IEEE/CPMT ITherm Conferences. He holds 22 U.S. issued patents, 2 US Trade Secrets and 1 Defensive Publication and has published over 107 papers in scientific journals and at conferences.

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Dr. Yoonjin Won is an Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, Irvine. She has courtesy appointments in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Materials Science Engineering. Dr. Won’s overarching research goal is to gain fundamental insights into nanoscale transport and interfacial physics, centering on key- words—AI for science, Graphic-driven physics, data-driven approach, and materials design. The research efforts aim to bring transformational efficiency enhancements in energy, water, manufacturing processes, and electronics cooling. Dr. Won is recognized with an NSF CAREER in 2018 and has also received several awards including the ASME EPPD Early Career Award 2018, The Emerging Innovation/Early Career Innovator of the Year 2020 from UCI Beall Innovation Center, ASME EPPD Women Engineer Award 2020, ASME ICNMM Outstanding Leadership Award 2019, UCI Samueli Career Development Fellowship, and numerous best paper and poster awards. She received a B.S. degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Seoul National University, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.

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Marcello Iasiello joined in 2017 the Industrial Engineering Department of the Università Degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Italy, as an Assistant Professor. At the same University he earned M. S. and Ph. D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering in 2012 and 2016, respectively. He was a visiting researcher at Universitat Politecnica de Valencia (10/2019 – 11/2019), and a visiting scholar at both University of California, Riverside (03/2014-09/2014) and University of Connecticut (05/2012-08/2012), respectively.

His research activity focuses on heat and mass transfer in innovative porous materials, latent thermal energy storage systems, and bioengineering applications. As of August 2022, he is currently coauthor of 75 scientific articles, namely 35 journal articles, 36 conference papers, 3 book chapters and 1 review article. Among his honors, in 2017 he achieved the 2015-2016 best Ph.D. thesis prize from the Unione Italiana Termofluidodinamica (UIT) thanks to its thesis titled "Transport Phenomena in Porous Media: From Industrial Applications to Bioengineering". In 2021, he won the Graham de Vahl Davis Best Paper Award at the 8th International Symposium on Advances in Computational Heat Transfer (CHT-21). He was the local congress chair at the 9th International Conference on Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow (HTFF'22) conference in Prague, Czech Republic, in 2022. He is currently associate editor of Special Topics & Reviews in Porous Media.