(198a) Leading and Managing Industry-Academia Partnerships and Collaborations Panel Discussion

• Discussion on benefits resulting from and concerns hindering industry-academia collaborations
• New methods and long term changes needed to lead and manage industry- academia partnerships and collaborations
• Benefits to diverse sectors including R&D, manufacturing, economics, strategic planning etc. and increasing participation across all.
• Definition of research contracts, communication channels, international collaborations, project timelines and deliverables

Invited Panelists:

Barclay Satterfield:External Innovation Leader at Eastman Chemical Company who has experience in open innovation and industry/university research partnerships, polymer property research and environmental life cycle analysis. She has been involved in a $10M 6-yr research partnership between Eastman Chemicals and NC State University.

Kenneth Rueter:President and CEO - UCOR LLC, a past Management Award recipient has over forty years of experience. He has been involved in a highly successful collaboration with the University of Tennessee Nuclear Engineering Department. This collaboration has established a Nuclear Decommissioning minor at the University of Tennessee enabling students to meet the high demand for Nuclear Legacy Cleanup around the World.

Dr. Kiarash Vakhshouri:Young professional working with Google with a solid expertise in structural characterization of semiconductor materials, thin film coating and printing, rheology, lithography and designing and operating laboratory and pilot plant chemical processes. He has several well-cited publications and four US patents to his credit and has been engaged in a number of industry-academia collaborative research projects right since graduate school.

Dr. Phil Westmoreland:Has a PhD from MIT and has been a Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering with the North Carolina State University. He has over 35 years of academic research experience and has held a variety of Directorial positions during his illustrious career. He has also served as the AIChE President in 2013. His research interests include flame chemistry, theoretical and computational chemistry and polymer decomposition kinetics and thermochemistry. He has been instrumental to a number of industry-academia-government collaborative projects.

Dr. Quinta Warren:CEO at Energy Research Consulting, PE, PMP has experience in industry, academia as well as Government. She was working with ConocoPhillips, has been a director of professional education and also worked with the US DOE. She brings in a unique entrepreneurial skill-set into synergizing these areas.

Dr. Sarma Pisupati:Professor of Energy and Mineral Engineering/Chemical Engineering and Director of Center for Critical Minerals at Penn State. He has more than 35 years experience in academia and has prior industrial experience as well. He specializes in computational fluid dynamic modeling of combustors, coal/biomass gasification, and biomass based materials for emission reduction. He has driven several successful collaborative research projects and novel initiatives with the US DOE as well as industrial partners.

Samuel Tam:(Have reached out only this week and waiting to hear back) President and CEO of CAC Solutions LLC and has been with the US DOE for 9 years where he managed total annual R&D spending was over U.S. $100 MM. He also has experience as a China Chief representative while working with the US DOE. Over his forty years of R&D, engineering, business development, pilot plant design and operation, and commercialization of technologies related to climate change in US DOE and five other major US corporations, Samuel has gained immense experience on fostering collaborations.