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Technology Days 2018 at NREL - Speaker Biographies

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Teo Devito

Teo DeVito is a Senior Environmental Specialist in NREL’s Environment, Safety, Health, & Quality Office and is a member of NREL’s Chemical Response Team. He has a lot of expertise in plant and animal identification, hydrology, viticulture and enology, hazardous waste management, hazardous materials and chemical management. At NREL, Teo is responsible for managing hazardous waste site-wide generated within the laboratory. He also educates researchers in the areas of waste management and minimization, helping reduce the amount of hazardous waste generated during research activities. He received his master’s degree in Organizational Development in Leadership from the University of the Rockies, and his bachelor’s degree in Natural Resources Management from Colorado State University.

Emma Elgqvist

Emma Elgqvist is an engineer in NREL’s Integrated Application Center’s Engineering and Modeling group. As part of the REopt team, Emma’s work includes providing technical assistance and deployment guidance on renewable energy (RE) technologies to meet aggressive energy goals, conducting renewable energy screenings and evaluating RE and storage deployment potential. Emma also leads the NREL efforts of the Federal Energy Management Program’s technical assistance program and portal, which provides agencies with support in the most critical areas of RE project development.

 

Jordan Macknick

Jordan Macknick is a member of the Systems Modeling team within the Systems Modeling & Geospatial Data Science Group in the Strategic Energy Analysis Center. His areas of expertise include renewable energy technological characterizations, database development, and policy analysis. Jordan’s research interests include the interface of energy and water in policy planning, environmental impacts of renewable energy technologies, and renewable energy deployment in developing countries. Prior to working at NREL, Jordan was a research associate with the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna, Austria, as well as a research assistant at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

Shanti Pless

Shanti Pless is part of NREL’s Commercial Building Research Group, focusing on applied research and design processes for commercial building energy efficiency and building integrated renewable energy. His work has included facilitating numerous integrated design processes and energy modeling teams needed to realize cost-effective zero-energy commercial buildings. He is leading the development of the next round of Advanced Energy Design Guides. Shanti has written more than 50 journal articles, industry publications, guidebooks, and technical reports related to energy efficiency and zero-energy buildings, with frequent national keynote speaking experience at industry conferences such as Greenbuild, AIA, and ASHRAE. He was awarded an ASHRAE Technology Award in 2013 for NREL's large-scale zero-energy Research Support Facility.

Ben Polly

Ben Polly specializes in the development, validation, and application of energy analysis approaches for individual buildings and collections of buildings. He has developed and applied software testing approaches for residential audit tools and associated utility bill calibration methods, methods for calculating life-cycle-cost-optimal retrofit packages, and approaches for analyzing measured energy consumption to estimate retrofit energy savings and improve software prediction accuracy. Ben's current research interests also include net zero buildings and neighborhoods, urban energy design and optimization, inverse design of buildings systems and materials, and smart grid-enabling building technologies (e.g., building energy storage).

 

Samantha Reese

Samantha Bench Reese is a member of the Techno Economic Analysis Group, Clean Energy Manufacturing Analysis Center (CEMAC) in NREL’s Strategic Energy Analysis Center. Her areas of expertise include system engineering and fundamentals; techno-economic analysis, including manufacturing cost models and cost reduction roadmaps; and supply chain analysis. Sam’s research interests include clean energy technologies, advanced manufacturing, wide-bandgap semiconductors, and solid-state lighting. Prior to joining NREL, Sam was a quality engineer at SpectraLogic in Boulder, Colorado.

 

Michelle Slovensky

Michelle Slovensky has more than 30 years of inter-disciplinary experience in energy and water management, green building design and construction, capital planning, and natural resource management. AS an Energy Program Manager at NREL, Michelle is a strategic leader and technical expert for implementing Presidential Executive Orders and DOE statutes, bridging research and operations in energy management, overseeing the design and construction of high-performance buildings and site design, measuring/monitoring/program implementation for performance metrics, developing return on investment for energy conservation measures, and developing policies and strategies for the efficient use of energy, water, and material resources.

Bethany Sparn

Bethany Sparn’s research focuses on connected building loads, residential HVAC equipment, heat pump water heaters, automated home energy management devices, and whole-house performance field testing. She has supported the design and build-out of the Smart Power Laboratory in the Energy Systems Integration Facility, which provides a testbed for evaluating home energy management systems, demand-response strategies, distributed energy resources, smart appliances, and other innovative sensors and controllers.

 

Mark Stock

Mark Stock works at NREL's Insight Center on a variety of technical projects as a scientific visualization specialist. His work focuses on parallel computation of unsteady, turbulent flows using vortex particle methods, while touching on topics in fast hierarchical methods, and computational geometry. His software development knowledge encompasses computer graphics, virtual reality, parallel computing, and manipulation of large spatial data sets. He received his Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from the University of Michigan.

Kim Trenbath

Kim Trenbath conducts project and program management for the Commercial Buildings Research Group at NREL. She manages the group's finances and leads business development efforts. Prior to joining NREL, Kim worked as an analyst in global power strategic sourcing, risk management, and wind energy business development. Her prior research involves in-cabin air quality, science understanding, and break-in training. She received her Ph.D. in atmospheric science from the University of Colorado.

 

 

Mike Ulsh

Mike Ulsh leads projects focusing on the development of diagnostic systems for in-line quality control, the study of the performance and durability effects of manufacturing defects, and exploration of material-process-performance relationships in clean energy material fabrication. He is the NREL lead for a multi-lab consortium on solution processing and roll-to-roll manufacturing, and is involved in several fuel cell supply chain development and cost modeling projects. His previous experience includes 11 years at 3M Company where he developed processes and products based on multilayer polymer film constructions, transferring these technologies to a continuous manufacturing environment.

 

Maikel van Hest

Maikel van Hest is currently a senior scientist in NREL’s Materials Science Center. His principal areas of research and expertise include solution-processing for silicon and thin-film solar cell applications, vacuum deposition, and transparent conductors. Maikel's current interests focus on the development of solution-deposited materials for photovoltaic (PV) applications (e.g. metals, Perovskites, OPV, CIGS and transparent conductors) and the scaling of these to large area using scalable processing methods. He is the PV thrust leader for the Solar Energy Research Institute between India and the United States (SERIIUS).

 

Otto Van Geet

Otto Van Geet is a Principal Engineer in NREL's Integrated Applications Center. Otto has been involved in the design, construction, and operation of energy-efficient research facilities such as laboratories and data centers, office and general-use facilities, and low energy use campus and community design. He was one of the founding members of the Labs21 program and provides technical guidance for the program. His experience also includes renewables screening and assessment, passive solar building design, use of design tools, photovoltaic (PV) system design for on- and off-grid applications, energy audits, and minimizing energy use. Otto is the author of many technical reports and conference papers and has received many professional awards, including the 2007 Presidential Award for Leadership in Federal Energy Management Program and the 2011 GreenGov Green Innovation Presidential Award.