Senior Staff Research Engineer
National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Derek Vardon is a Senior Staff Research Engineer and research project team leader at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). His research interests include applied catalysis for renewable diesel and aviation fuels, fuel-property informed process design, decarbonization of the transportation sector, and advanced catalyst material synthesis and characterization for biomass conversion. Since 2013, he has worked in the National Bioenergy Center at NREL. He received his B.S. (2010), M.S. (2012), and Ph.D. (2015) in Environmental Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prior to entering college, he served 6 years in the U.S. Navy as a nuclear electrician's mate.