Dr Leif Asp holds the chair as professor in lightweight composite materials and structures at the Division of Material and Computational Mechanics at the Department of Industrial and Materials Science at Chalmers University of technology in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Dr Asp received his PhD in Polymer engineering at Lulea University of Technology, Sweden, in 1995 and joined the Swedish Aeronautical Research Institute (FFA) in Stockholm. In 2000 he founded the Swedish Institute of Composites’ (SICOMP) office in the greater Gothenburg region and in 2011 he was appointed head of research for the institute. During this period, he held positions as adjunct professor at Lulea university of technology and Chalmers university of technology, as well as President for the European Society of Composites (ESCM). In 2015 Dr Asp joined Chalmers as full professor. Dr Asp served as President of the International Committee on Composite Materials (ICCM) during the period 2017-2019. In year 2014 Dr Asp was appointed fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences.

Dr Asp’s research is focused on efficient design methodologies for carbon fibre composite transport applications. The research relies on more than twenty-five years’ experience in damage tolerance modelling, design and certification methods for aircraft composite structures.

Since 2007, Professor Asp leads research activities on multifunctional composites. In particular, the research group performs research on structural battery composites, a material that can simultaneously store electrical energy and carry mechanical loads. The work comprises material development and characterization, ranging from mechanical and electrochemical characterization of constituents to cells and multi-cell structures.

Dr. Baur is a Founder Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) with a focus on materials and manufacturing of multifunctional and adaptive composites. He joined UIUC in January of 2022. Prior to his appointment to UIUC, Dr. Baur worked for 26 years at the Materials and Manufacturing Directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory as Division Technical Director, Branch Technical Advisor, Research Leader, Program Manager, and in-house researcher. In the past few years, he was the principal investigator, program manager, advocate, and architect for programs in additive printed air vehicles, morphing missiles, and composite manufacturing for experimental aircraft. He has led teams of researchers in the design, testing, and performance prediction of polymer matrix and ceramic composite composites with application to propulsion, aircraft structures, and advanced munitions. Scientifically, Dr. Baur remains personally active in the development of additive printed structural composites, frontal polymerization, shape changing air vehicles, nano-tailoring polymer composites, microvascular composites, and structurally embedded sensing. He has co-authored more than 90 refereed papers, 1 book, 3 book chapters, and 5 patents.

Shashank Priya is vice president for research at the University of Minnesota.

Priya comes to the University of Minnesota from Pennsylvania State University, where he has served as associate vice president for research and managed several strategic responsibilities of the research office. Of his accomplishments in this role, he is especially proud of growing Penn State’s Strategic Interdisciplinary Research Office (SIRO), which handled the submission of large and complex proposals, and managing the Commonwealth Campus Research Programs, which helped faculty initiate and conduct competitive research. He reorganized SIRO and doubled its size, which led to an increased number of proposal submissions with high funding rates. He seeded research activities across Penn State’s multiple campuses in the form of small grants to work with core facilities and large grants to form center nodes. He also grew international research partnerships with universities in Europe, Australia, and Asia and worked with university-wide core facilities to develop plans for equipment needs. As part of his strategic initiatives portfolio, he organized faculty teams on developing new ideas and worked with them on securing funding.

As vice president for research at the University, Priya will oversee a $1+ billion research enterprise across all campuses and have responsibility for units that administer sponsored projects, research and regulatory compliance, and technology commercialization, as well as for 10 interdisciplinary academic centers and institutes and a growing corporate engagement portfolio for the University.

Dr. Kevin Simmons is a Chief Materials Scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory with more than 30 years of research experience in polymer and composites processing and polymeric properties. Combining these two specialties allows him to work with government and industrial sectors to efficiently solve problems and the selection of polymers and composites for product development.

The majority of Dr. Simmons’ diverse research portfolio supports missions in energy efficiency and supply, including vehicle light-weighting and pressure vessels for hydrogen storage and material compatibility. Dr. Simmons was the task lead for the Department of Energy’s multi-lab, multi-company Hydrogen Storage Engineering Center of Excellence for hydrogen pressure vessels, containment, and balance-of-plant components, where he led the effort to reduce cost, volume, and mass and developed a balance-of-plant library. He has also been the project manager for several DOE projects, including work to reduce the cost of 700 bar hydrogen storage pressure vessels and economic analysis of hydrogen balance-of-plant components and pressure vessels. Currently, he is the principal investigator and multinational lead for materials qualification for liquid and high-pressure cryo-compressed hydrogen storage. This work, sponsored by DOE’s Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology Office, aims to address the limited body of knowledge for hydrogen compatibility with polymers and elastomers at pressure and temperature. He is also part of a research group working on recycling thermoset composites for automotive and pressure vessel applications.

Dr. Simmons is the co-lead of the U.S. Department of Energy’s recently launched Hydrogen Materials Compatibility —or H-Mat—Consortium with Sandia National Laboratories. H-Mat is a multi-laboratory collaboration with Sandia, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Savannah River National Laboratory, and Argonne National Laboratory. Its aims are to develop science-based approaches to improve reliability and lower the cost of materials used in hydrogen delivery and storage technologies, and to inform codes and standards to guide their development and use. This work includes investigating the effects of hydrogen interactions with polymers through experimental research and multiscale modeling.

He also leads the material tasks in a HyBlend project evaluating the effects of blended natural gas and hydrogen on the existing U.S. natural gas infrastructure that encompasses nearly three million miles of pipeline. Dr. Simmons’ research is on the existing plastic pipeline and the effects of hydrogen addition over its lifetime.

Dr. Simmons’ past experience in developing improved polymer composite properties with the U.S. Army and a private company involved new methods of applying unique chemistry to different fiber substrates and particulate filler materials. Dr. Simmons has also worked with the Department of Energy and a heavy truck manufacturer to reduce weight and costs in Class 8 tractors through a combination of materials that synergistically reduced the hood’s weight by 40% with a class A finish.

Dr. Simmons enjoys bringing fundamental science together with applied science to solve problems and to form new ideas. He is one of 37 Distinguished Inventors at PNNL with 17 U.S. patents, five foreign patents, two R&D100 Awards, two Federal Laboratory Consortium Awards, and the Laboratory Director’s Award for Contributions to Science Education.

Dr. Simmons has a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, a master’s degree in Engineering Management, and a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering.

Dr. Johanna Xu is a Researcher in the division of Material and Computational Mechanics, Department of Industrial and

Materials Science at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Dr. Johanna Xu received her Ph.D. in Polymeric Composite Materials from Lulea University of Technology, Sweden, in 2019. The work focused on multi-physics modeling of structural batteries combining mechanics of composite materials with electrochemistry.

Dr. Xu joined Prof. Leif Asp’s group at Chalmers after her Ph.D., continuing to work with structural batteries but with a clear shift of focus on experiments. The work comprises material development and characterization on several length scales, and investigation of the coupled multi-physical processes in these materials.