Regents' Professor and Carter N. Paden, Jr. Distinguished Chair in Metals Processing, Dave McDowell joined Georgia Tech in 1983 and holds a dual appointment in the GWW School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Materials Science and Engineering. He served as Director of the Mechanical Properties Research Laboratory from 1992-2012. In 2012 he was named Founding Director of the Institute for Materials (IMaT), one of Georgia Tech's Interdisciplinary Research Institutes charged with fostering an innovation ecosystem for research and education. He has served as Executive Director of IMaT since 2013. McDowell's research focuses on nonlinear constitutive models for engineering materials, including cellular metallic materials, nonlinear and time dependent fracture mechanics, finite strain inelasticity and defect field mechanics, distributed damage evolution, constitutive relations and microstructure-sensitive computational approaches to deformation and damage of heterogeneous alloys, combined computational and experimental strategies for modeling high cycle fatigue in advanced engineering alloys, atomistic simulations of dislocation nucleation and mediation at grain boundaries, multiscale computational mechanics of materials ranging from atomistics to continuum, and systems-based computational materials design. A Fellow of SES, ASM International, ASME and AAM, McDowell is the recipient of the 1997 ASME Materials Division Nadai Award for career achievement and the 2008 Khan International Medal for lifelong contributions to the field of metal plasticity. McDowell currently serves on the editorial boards of several journals, and is co-Editor of the International Journal of Fatigue.

Dr. Fan Zhang received her Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering and M.S. in Statistics from UTK in 2019. She is the recipient of the 2021 Ted Quinn Early Career Award from the American Nuclear Society and joined the Woodruff School in July, 2021. She is actively involved with multiple international collaborations on improving nuclear cybersecurity through the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the DOE Office of International Nuclear Security (INS). Dr. Zhang’s research primarily focuses on the cybersecurity of nuclear facilities, online monitoring & fault detection using data analytics methods, instrumentation & control, and nuclear systems modeling & simulation. She has developed multiple testbeds using both simulators and physical components to investigate different aspects of cybersecurity as well as process health management.

Dr. Julie Linsey is an associate professor at Georgia Institute of Technology in the Mechanical Engineering Department. She earned a PhD and MS in mechanical engineering from The University of Texas at Austin and a BS in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan. From 2008 to 2012, she worked as an assistant professor at Texas A&M University. Her research focus is on systematic methods and tools for innovative design with a particular focus on concept generation and design-by-analogy. She has co-authored over fifteen technical publications including two book chapters and holds two patents.

Erturk began at Georgia Tech in May 2011 as an Assistant Professor, he was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2016 and became a full Professor in 2019. Prior to joining Georgia Tech, he worked as a Research Scientist in the Center for Intelligent Material Systems and Structures at Virginia Tech (2009-2011). His postdoctoral research interests included theory and experiments of smart structures for applications ranging from aeroelastic energy harvesting to bio-inspired actuation. His Ph.D. dissertation (2009) was centered on experimentally validated electromechanical modeling of piezoelectric energy harvesters using analytical and approxIMaTe analytical techniques. Prior to his Ph.D. studies in Engineering Mechanics at Virginia Tech, Erturk completed his M.S. degree (2006) in Mechanical Engineering at METU with a thesis on analytical and semi-analytical modeling of spindle-tool dynamics in machining centers for predicting chatter stability and identifying interface dynamics between the assembly components.

Baratunde A. Cola is a professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his degrees from Vanderbilt University and Purdue University, all in mechanical engineering, and was a starting fullback on the Vanderbilt football team as an undergrad. Cola has received a number of prestigious early career research awards including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientist and Engineers (PECASE) in 2012 from President Obama for his work in nanotechnology, energy, and outreach to high school art and science teachers and students; the AAAS Early Career Award for Public Engagement with Science in 2013; and the 2015 Bergles-Rohsenow Young Investigator Award in Heat Transfer from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. In addition to research and teaching, Cola is the founder and CEO of Carbice Corporation, which sells a leading thermal management solution for the global electronics industry.

Bojan Petrovic joined Georgia Tech in 2007 as a Professor. Prior to that he acquired industrial experience as a Fellow Scientist in Westinghouse Science and Technology where his primary responsibility was as the project Deputy Director on the development of the advanced, modular IRIS reactor.

Dr. Petrovic's current research focuses on advanced reactor design, nuclear fuel cycle and waste management, and related modeling and simulation methods.

Over the past ten years, he has been involved in the development of the IRIS Reactor, within an international team of 19 organizations from ten countries. IRIS is an advanced medium power (335 MWe) integral-type PWR, based on proven light-water technology, but incorporating many innovative solutions that improve its operation, safety, security, and economics. Advanced reactors have the potential to offer full benefit in synergy with advanced fuel cycles. Recently, the focus of this research is shifting to judicious selection of fuel cycle, reprocessing, and partition and transmutation options, which  may significantly reduce the radiotoxicity of spent nuclear fuel and enable its safe and economical ultimate disposal.

Novel reactor designs and advanced fuel cycles pose new challenges and require improved, more accurate methods of modeling and simulations. Dr. Petrovic's interest is in developing approaches for using Monte Carlo and hybrid deterministic-Monte Carlo methods (for eigenvalue as well as shielding applications) in a way that will be practical and relevant for analysis of complex nuclear systems.

Dr. Petrovic has a strong interest in interdisciplinary areas, and his research projects have included collaboration related to industrial and medical applications of nuclear technology. His recent research in computational medical physics focuses on proton therapy. His research has been sponsored by the Department of Energy, industry and utilities.

Shannon Yee began as an Assistant Professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering in January 2014. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of California - Berkeley under the supervision of Prof. Arun Majumdar, Prof. Chris Dames, and Prof. Rachel Segalman. In 2010, he was named the first fellow to the U.S. Dept. of Energy 's Advanced Research Project Agency - Energy (ARPA-E) assisting to form the agency in its inaugural year. In 2008 he was awarded the prestigious Hertz Fellowship to support his graduate studies and research in energy. Yee received his Master 's degree in Nuclear Engineering in 2008 from The Ohio State University where he was a U.S. Dept. of Energy Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative Fellow. He received his Bachelor 's degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2007, also from The Ohio State University.

Seung Woo Lee joined the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology as an assistant professor in January of 2013. Lee received his Ph.D. in chemical engineering at MIT, focusing on designing high-energy and high-power density nanostructured electrodes for electrochemical energy storage devices, and synthesizing catalysts for electrochemical energy conversion of small molecules such as methanol oxidation and O2 reduction. He conducted his postdoctoral research in designing electrodes for lithium rechargeable batteries and catalysts for solar energy storage in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Chemistry at MIT.

Marta Hatzell is an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. Prior to starting at Georgia Tech in August of 2015, she was a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Material Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign. During her post doc, she worked in the Braun Research Group on research at the interface between colloid science and electrochemistry. She completed her Ph.D. at Penn state University in the Logan Research Group. Her Ph.D. explored environmental technology for energy generation and water treatment. During graduate school she was an NSF and PEO Graduate Research Fellow. 

Currently her research group focuses on exploring the sustainable catalysis and separations, with applications spanning from solar energy conversion to desalination. She is an active member of the American Chemical Society, the Electrochemical Society, ASEEP, and ASME. Hatzell was awarded the NSF Early CAREER award in 2019 for her work on distributed solar-fertilizers, attended the 2019 US Frontiers of Engineering Symposium through the National Academy of Engineering, and was awarded the 2020 Sloan Research Fellowships in Chemistry.

Rudolph (Rudy) L. Gleason began at Tech in Fall 2005 as an assistant professor. Prior, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Texas A&M University. He is currently a professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Biomedical Engineering in the College of Engineering. Gleason’s research program has two key and distinct research aims. The first research aim is to quantify the link between biomechanics, mechanobiology, and tissue growth and remodeling in diseases of the vasculature and other soft tissues. The second research aim is to translate engineering innovation to combat global health disparities and foster sustainable development in low-resource settings around the world. Gleason serves as a Georgia Tech Institute for People and Technology initiative lead for research activities related to global health equity and wellbeing.