Coming soon

Suresh Garimella serves as the 23rd president of the University of Arizona and University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, positions he assumed on October 1, 2024. He was unanimously appointed by the Arizona Board of Regents following a robust national search. On selecting Garimella to lead the university, Board Chair Cecilia Mata praised his collaborative leadership, experience, and vision, calling him a "tireless champion for students" who is well suited to lead the university into a bright future.

Previously, he was president of the University of Vermont (UVM) from 2019 to 2024. Under his leadership, the university underscored its reputation as a premier flagship research university dedicated to providing a world-class student experience and committed to fulfilling its land-grant mission, a focus he brings to the U of A as well.

Throughout his career, Garimella has emphasized the importance of access and affordability for students, and he has worked to promote excellence in the student learning experience. A professor of mechanical engineering, he is both a highly cited scholar and researcher and a passionate educator, mentoring over 90 graduate students and 50 post-doctoral scholars, 29 of whom were placed in prestigious faculty positions across the world. During his tenure as UVM’s president, he led an annual undergraduate seminar class devoted to engaging students in civil discourse on multifaceted contemporary issues.

As a researcher, Garimella has made seminal contributions to the field of electronics thermal management and energy efficiency at micro and nano scales, and in sustainable energy systems technology and policy. He is co-author of over 625 refereed publications and 16 issued patents, and he has been recognized as an elected Member of the National Academy of Engineering and elected Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Garimella also has made important contributions in national and international policy matters. He served as a member of the National Science Board, which oversees the National Science Foundation and acts as an independent body of advisers to both the President and Congress on policy matters related to science and engineering. He also chairs the research advisory board of Sandia National Laboratories, is a member of the board of directors at Modine and the executive committee for the Council on Competitiveness, and previously served as a Jefferson Science Fellow at the U.S. Department of State and as Senior Fellow for Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas.

Prior to his time leading the University of Vermont, President Garimella served at Purdue University as the Goodson Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Executive Vice President for Research and Partnerships. Under his leadership of Purdue’s $660 million research enterprise, the university achieved five consecutive record years in sponsored funding and seeded approximately 50 startups annually. He developed strategic and comprehensive partnerships with major corporations, NGOs, and national governments in Colombia, India, and the Middle East, conceived and implemented ambitious campuswide initiatives in life sciences and integrative data science, and oversaw Purdue’s Discovery Park, a unique set of facilities and institutes where the convergence of disciplines helped solve global challenges related to health and life sciences, sustainability, food, energy, and defense and security.

His educational background includes a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, an M.S. from The Ohio State University, and a bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.

His plenary talk will provide a strategic overview of the carbon capture and storage industry, highlighting ADM’s leadership, current initiatives, and the vision for future directions in collaboration with academia and industry.

Matt Kaloupek is Vice President of Carbon Capture and Storage at ADM, where he leads strategy and execution in one of the company’s most dynamic growth areas. With a background spanning engineering, operations, finance, and commercial leadership, Matt brings a uniquely interdisciplinary perspective to industrial decarbonization. He holds a BSE in Mechanical Engineering from Duke and an MBA from Millikin University. Matt also serves on the Illinois State University Mechanical Engineering Industry Advisory Council, helping shape the next generation of technical leaders. His work focuses on bridging technical innovation with commercial viability in the carbon economy.

Before becoming the MD, Amit was the Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer of TCE from July '12 onward and on the EcoFirst Services Private Limited board from March '13 onwards.

Amit's experience spans Design and Engineering Consulting with a focus on Product Development, Project and Plant Engineering and Design & Asset Lifecycle Management across Process, Discrete and Infrastructure sectors. He has championed the creation and implementation of enabling governance, business models, change management, program management and solutions.

Amit strongly believes in leveraging people, process and computer-aided design & engineering digital toolsets to promote transformation and collaboration. He is a promoter of the next generation of lean thinking, innovation, agility and optimization across the engineering and design value chain.

Prior to Tata Consulting Engineers (TCE), Amit served as the Resident Director of Atkins India Pvt Limited, part of the global engineering and design firm WS Atkins PLC. In this role, he was responsible for the Global design centre of excellence and Atkins India business spanning Energy, AEC, Rail, Transportation, Aerospace, Water & Environment and Infrastructure related engineering consulting.

Before joining Atkins in London, UK, Amit was with Infosys based in London. He spent close to a decade spearheading the Engineering & Design, Product Lifecycle Management and Embedded Systems offerings across the globe. At Infosys, Amit managed clients worldwide, spanning sectors ranging from Automotive, Aerospace, Retail, Energy to Heavy Engineering, Agro-Chemical, Pharmaceuticals and Hi-Tech.

He started his professional career at Tata Motors before moving to the US. He did his higher studies and worked with Sapient Technologies in their Collaborative technologies practice, and led the creation of the Product Lifecycle Management offering.

At TCE, Amit works closely with the team to charter TCE's growth, scale, and evolution into an innovative and leading Design & Engineering Consultancy across selected sectors and International markets, leveraging its glorious 60 years of proven excellent track record. Amit is also leading industry trends like energy transition, sustainability. industry 5.0 etc.

He also is a Central Governing Council Member of the Services Export Promotion Council (SEPC) and Chairs the Design, Engineering and Construction sector.

As the General Council member of Consulting Engineers Association of India (CEAI), he champions the cause of the Indian Consulting Engineers fraternity. 

Coming soon

Dr. Srinivas Garimella is the Hightower Chair in Engineering and a Professor in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is director of the Sustainable Thermal Systems Laboratory, which he founded upon his arrival at Georgia Tech in 2003.

Dr. Garimella received a Ph.D. degree (1990) and an M. S. degree in Nuclear Engineering from The Ohio State University. He received a B. Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from The Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (India) in 1982. He was a Research Scientist at Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, OH from 1984-1990, and a Senior Engineer in the Delphi Harrison Thermal Systems Division of General Motors Corporation in Lockport, NY from 1990-1993. After serving as a Research Specialist in the Mechanical Engineering Department at The Ohio State University from 1993-1994, he joined Western Michigan University, where he served on the faculty of the Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering Department from 1994-1998. Dr. Garimella was an associate professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Advanced Thermal Systems Laboratory at the Iowa State University prior to joining Georgia Tech.

Dr. Garimella has mentored over 75 postdoctoral researchers, research engineers and students pursuing their M.S. and Ph.D. degrees, with his research resulting in over 250 archival journal and conference publications, a textbook on Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow in Minichannels and Microchannels (2nd Ed., Elsevier 2014), and a book on Condensation Heat Transfer (World Scientific Publishing, 2015). He has been awarded eight patents. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, past Associate Editor of the ASME Journal of Heat Transfer, and Editor of the International Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration. He has also served as Associate Editor of the ASME Journal of Energy Resources Technology, and Past Chair of the Advanced Energy Systems Division of ASME. He was an Associate Editor of the ASHRAE HVAC&R Research Journal and Chair of the ASHRAE Technical Committee on Absorption and Heat Operated Machines, and was on the ASHRAE Research Administration Committee. He is a corresponding member of the ASHRAE Technical Committee on Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow. He held the William and Virginia Binger Associate Professorship of Mechanical Engineering at ISU from 1999-2001. He is the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award (1999), the ASHRAE New Investigator Award (1998), the SAE Ralph E. Teetor Educational Award for Engineering Educators (1998), and was the Iowa State University Miller Faculty Fellow (1999-2000) and Woodruff Faculty Fellow (2003-2008) at Georgia Tech. He received the ASME Award for Outstanding Research Contributions in the Field of Two-Phase Flow and Condensation in Microchannels (2012). He also received the Thomas French Distinguished Educator Achievement Award (2008) from The Ohio State University, and the Zeigler Outstanding Educator Award (2012) at Georgia Tech.

His research has been funded by government agencies and industry, including the National Science Foundation, US DOE, ARPA-E, US Navy, US Army, Office of Naval Research, Nuclear Energy University Programs, Sandia National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Georgia Research Alliance, ASHRAE, AHRI, Electric Power Research Institute, Iowa Energy Center, Exxon Mobil, Shell Global Solutions, General Motors Corporation, Modine Manufacturing Company, John Deere, United Technologies, Rockwell Collins, ALCOA, Heat Transfer Research, Inc., Atlanta Gas Light Resources, BAE Systems Science and Technology, Cargill, and LG Electronics.

Coming soon

Barton (Bart) Katz is the President & Chief Commercial Officer of Nanospan Technologies. He received his Bachelor of Science in Engineering (B.S.E.) degree in chemical engineering from Arizona State University in 1983. He has been involved in the semiconductor manufacturing and equipment industry for 42 years.  He started his career at Motorola building memory devices and went on to work for General Electric in advanced materials for semiconductor manufacturing. He was one of the original founding members of the semiconductor equipment company ASML and has been involved in several notable start-up companies in the industry. His latest venture involves the application of unique technologies and techniques in inspection, metrology, and lithography involved in various aspects of semiconductor manufacturing including wafer and panel inspection, substrate-specific inspection such as SiC, glass, and other materials, and metrology related to TGVs and bumps. He’s published numerous articles and papers in leading conferences and publications.

Coming soon

Sung-Jin Kim received the Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from the Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA, in 1989.,He is a Professor with the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Korea. Before joining KAIST in 1997, he was been a Group Leader of the Thermal Engineering Center, IBM, Tucson, AZ, USA, for seven years. His research group at KAIST held the National Research Laboratory status from 2006 to 2011. He edited a book entitled Air Cooling Technology for Electronic Equipment.,Dr. Kim is a member of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology and an ASME Fellow. He was a recipient of the Scientific Achievement Award from the Korea Society of Mathematical Education, the Excellent Teaching Awards from KAIST, two Invention Achievement Awards and five Author Recognition Awards from IBM. In 2012, he was awarded a prestigious nine-year grant by Korea's Creative Research Initiative to develop flexible and thin thermal superconductors.

Coming soon

Miljkovic's research intersects the multidisciplinary fields of thermo-fluid sciences, interfacial phenomena, and renewable energy. He aims to bring about transformational efficiency enhancements in energy (power generation to oil and gas to renewables), water, agriculture, transportation and electronics cooling by fundamentally manipulating heat-fluid-surface interactions across multiple length and time scales. The focus of his research are directed towards both: 1) fundamental research on micro/nanostructured surfaces for phase change, interfacial phenomena, and electrokinetics, and 2) applied research on devices and systems including solar thermal energy conversion and atmospheric energy harvesting.

Education:

BASc, Mechanical Engineering, University of Waterloo, 2009

M.S., Mechanical Engineering, MIT, 2011

Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, MIT, 2013

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Dr. Karma Sawyer is the Director of the Electricity Infrastructure and Buildings (EI&B) Division, responsible for shaping and managing a vision and strategy to assure that PNNL addresses DOE's most important energy efficiency, clean energy and electricity infrastructure challenges. The EI&B Division consists of more than 400 staff members in six technical groups. 

Prior to joining PNNL, Karma served as the Program Manager for Emerging Technologies at DOE's Building Technologies Office. In this role, she developed and executed multi-year R&D strategies across a range of building technologies. She also worked collaboratively with the national labs and external stakeholders to advance cross-cutting initiative, such as the Grid-interactive Efficient Buildings, Advanced Building Construction and Grid Modernization Initiatives. From 2010-2013, Karma served as an Assistant Program Director and Fellow at ARPA-E, focusing on carbon capture and thermal storage technologies.

Dr. Sawyer earned a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 2008. She also holds a B.S. in Chemistry from Syracuse University.

Industrial heat accounts for nearly one half of the on-site energy used by the energy intensive industries in the US, which is dominated by five sectors, chemicals/petrochemicals, iron and steel, cement, paper and pulp and food and beverage. EPIXC (Electrified Processes for Industrial Excellence), US DOE’s 7th Manufacturing Innovation Institute, aims to develop technologies which improve energy efficiency, process control and/or product quality for energy intensive industries. 

In this talk I will present key challenges, opportunities and findings from our road map. I will also share updates from our ongoing projects. These will include electrification of slab re-heating and  vessel pre heating in the steel industry, synchronized  distillation of chemicals and electric calcination. 

Sridhar Seetharaman is the Chief Science Officer in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. 

Seetharaman received his undergraduate degree from the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and his PhD from MIT. He spent most of his faculty career at Carnegie Mellon as the POSCO Chair of Steelmaking with a joint appointment at National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), followed by a period in the UK as the TATA-Royal Academy Chair of Low Carbon Technologies. Sridhar then served at DOE as a Senior Technology Advisor at EERE. He is a member of the Industrial Technology Innovation Advisory Committee (ITIAC). Currently Sridhar is with Arizona State University, holds a joint affiliate appointment at National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and is the CEO of EPIXC, DOE’s 7th Manufacturing Innovation Institute.

In 2023, the U.S. Department of Energy selected Arizona State University to receive up to $70 million to establish a new manufacturing innovation institute devoted to improve competitiveness for US manufacturing through energy efficient process heating.

EPIXC joins the DOE’s six other Manufacturing USA institutes, which convene the nation’s brightest minds to solve the country’s toughest manufacturing challenges and move novel process heating technologies out of the lab and into the market. 

Coming soon

Kyle Squires serves as the dean for the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering and Senior Vice Provost for Engineering, Computing and Technology at Arizona State University. Previously, he served as the vice dean and interim dean for the Fulton Schools and as director of the School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy (SEMTE), one of the eight Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. As SEMTE director, he oversaw degree and research programs in aerospace engineering, chemical engineering, materials science and engineering, mechanical engineering and the professional science master’s program in solar energy engineering and commercialization. 

Professor Squires leads the advancement of the Fulton Schools, focused on global leadership in engineering education and research and innovation at scale. Central to the student experience is the “Fulton Difference” – opportunities beyond the classroom that include signature undergraduate and graduate research, peer mentoring, entrepreneurship, student organizations, internships, and community service. The Fulton Schools research enterprise is characterized by discoveries of fundamental value and advancement of technologies for immediate impact, as evidenced by the fact that FSE is among the top 5 schools in the country for licenses and options, startups and invention disclosures per $10 million in research expenditures.

He has held numerous visiting appointments in the U.S., Japan and France and was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2008. A professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, Professor Squires’ research expertise encompasses computational fluid dynamics, turbulence modeling of both single-phase and multi-phase flows, and high-performance computing. Specific interests include the use of direct numerical simulation and large eddy simulation applied to particle-laden turbulent flows and the development of hybrid Reynolds-averaged and large eddy simulation techniques for high Reynolds number wall-bounded flows. Squires applies his expertise to exploration of ways to improve the aerodynamics of aircraft, ground vehicles and sports equipment.

Education

• Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University 1990
• M.S. Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University 1985
• B.S. Mechanical Engineering, Washington State University 1984

Coming soon

Hadi Ghasemi is Cullen associate professor in the department of mechanical engineering at the university of Houston. He was a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT between 2012-2014. He graduated from University of Toronto in 2011 with a PhD degree in mechanical engineering. His research interests are in nanotechnology, surafce physics and heat transfer.

Education:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Postdoctoral Associate (Oct. 2012 – July 2014); Advisor: Prof. Gang Chen; Conducted research on “Aerogel-based solar collectors”; Conducted research on “Heat localization concept”; Conducted research on “Full-spectrum solar collectors”; Conducted research on “High thermal conductive polyethylene thin films”

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Postdoctoral Associate (Dec. 2011 – Dec. 2012); Advisor: Prof. Alexander Mitsos; Conducted research on “Hybrid solar-geothermal power generation”; Conducted research on “Dual extremum principle in thermodynamics”

University of Toronto, Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering (2007 – 2011); Dissertation: “Sessile Water Droplets: Equilibrium and Evaporation”; Advisor: Prof. Charles A. Ward

Sharif University of Technology, M.Sc. in Materials Science and Engineering (2004 – 2006)

Iran University of Science and Technology, B.Sc. in Materials Science and Engineering (1999 – 2003)

Coming soon

Dr. Amy Marconnet is a professor of Mechanical Engineering and professor of Materials Engineering (by Courtesy), as well as a Perry Academic Excellence Scholar, at Purdue University. She received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin – Madison in 2007, and an M.S. and a PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University in 2009 and 2012, respectively. Her dissertation focused on thermal phenomena in nanostructured materials. She then worked briefly as a postdoctoral associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, before joining the faculty at Purdue University in August 2013. At Purdue, she has developed an interdisciplinary research program to evaluate, understand, and control the physical mechanisms governing the multi-functional properties of materials, machines, and systems with an emphasis on thermal management of electronic devices. Her work has won outstanding/best paper awards several times at IEEE ITherm and ASME InterPACK, and from IEEE Transactions on Components, Packaging and Manufacturing Technology - Components, Characterization & Modeling. In 2017, she won the Woman in Engineering Award from the ASME Electronics & Photonics Packaging Division (EPPD). In 2020, she won the Bergles-Rohsenow Young Investigator Award in Heat Transfer and the Outstanding Graduate Student Mentor from the Official Mechanical Engineering Graduate Association (OMEGA) and the College of Engineering. Winning the Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers, she conducted research at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in the 2021-22 academic year. She is a fellow of ASME and a member of the Scientific Council of the International Centre for Heat and Mass Transfer.

Coming soon

René Villalobos is an Associate Emeritus Professor in the Industrial Engineering Program at Arizona State University (ASU). He earned a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from Tecnológico de Chihuahua, a master's degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Texas at El Paso, and a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Texas A&M University. His research interests encompass food logistics, energy efficiency, applied operations research, automated quality assurance, and manufacturing systems.

Currently, he serves as the president of Freshkube Inc. (www.freshkube.com), Terra Integrated Solutions (www.tisconsulting.org), and Vica Delicias (www.vicadelicias.com). At Freshkube, he is engineering modular logistics systems that deliver the efficiency of large-scale shipments to small, distributed payloads—bridging the gap between bulk transport and last-mile delivery. Sponsors of this work include National Science Foundation, the City of Phoenix and the US Air Force.

During his tenure at Arizona State University, Villalobos led the International Logistics and Productivity Improvement Laboratory (ILPIL, http://ilpil.asu.edu), where he deployed advanced analytical frameworks—including discrete event simulation, statistical inference, data mining, and mathematical optimization—to solve complex industrial challenges. His methodologies were applied across diverse projects, driving measurable improvements in workforce productivity, capacity planning, and logistics performance.

From 2016 to 2021, Villalobos served as Director of the Arizona State University site of the Industrial Assessment Center (IAC), a U.S. Department of Energy–sponsored initiative focused on advancing energy efficiency in small to mid-sized U.S. manufacturers. Under his leadership, the ASU IAC delivered data-driven assessments and actionable recommendations to improve operational sustainability and reduce energy consumption across diverse industrial sectors. https://iac.engineering.asu.edu

Dr. Villalobos established and directed the Center for Electronics Manufacturing at the University of Texas at El Paso, focusing on applied research and industry collaboration to resolve pressing issues in electronics assembly.

Sponsors of Dr. Villalobos’ research include the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research, National Science Foundation, the US Department of Energy, Texas Advanced Technology Program, the Arizona Dept. of Transportation, US Army, the US Department of Homeland Security, Howard G. Buffett Foundation.  He was the recipient of the 1993 IIE Doctoral Dissertation Award and a 1995 NSF Career Grant.  In 2016 he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to conduct educational and research activities in Chile.