Co-Optima’s laboratory leadership team includes representatives from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), with oversight from the U.S. Department of Energy; together with Steering Committee partners from Argonne, Idaho, Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore, and Los Alamos National Laboratories.
Dr. Robert Wagner is the director of the National Transportation Research Center at ORNL. He has more than 20 years of experience in combustion and fuels research and is the ORNL laboratory relationship manager for the DOE fuels, engines, and emissions program. He has more than 100 publications and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Society of Automotive Engineers International, and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
Dan Gaspar is a Technical Team Lead at PNNL in the Chemical and Biological Processing Group. He received his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Chicago and his BS in Chemistry from Duke University. His research focuses on the use of chemical to advance energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies. He has advanced technologies across a broad range of applications, leading efforts in organic light emitting diodes, solar energy and other areas over 20 years and has published more than 50 papers, book chapters and books. He is a member of Co-Optima Leadership Team and previously served as the High Performance Fuels Team Lead.
Dr. Robert L. McCormick is a Senior Research Fellow in the Fuels and Combustion Science group at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. This group’s research is focused on biofuels properties and fuel-engine interactions including biofuel quality and quality specifications, compatibility with modern engines, combustion, pollutant emissions effects, and leveraging fuel properties for design of more efficient engines. Bob has a PhD in chemical engineering. Before joining the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in 2001 he was a research professor at the Colorado School of Mines. He has coauthored over 100 peer reviewed technical articles and is a Fellow of SAE International.
Anthe George leads the Biomass Science and Conversion Technologies department at Sandia National Laboratories, a team of over 30 scientists and researchers working towards enabling the bio-economy. She has over 50 peer reviewed publications and numerous awards and patents. She holds affiliate positions at Imperial College London and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where she is a key scientist at the Joint BioEnergy institute. Anthe has been involved in Co-Optima from its inception, and previously led Co-Optima’s High Performance Fuels team.
Kevin Stork manages Fuel & Lubricant Technologies R&D in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Vehicle Technologies Program. Previously, he spent seven years as a research engineer with Argonne National Laboratory’s Transportation Technology R&D Center, in Argonne, Illinois. He has also worked in Occidental Petroleum’s Health, Environment and Safety program, focusing on legislative and regulatory issues.
Mr. Stork has worked on alternative and conventional fuel analyses focusing on fuel utilization, production, distribution, and life-cycle analysis of energy and emissions and has conducted experimental work on automotive emission-control devices. He holds a B.A. in History from Reed College and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Virginia.
Alicia Lindauer is a Technology Manager for the Analysis Program within the U.S. Department of Energy’s Bioenergy Technologies Office, where she manages strategic analysis and bioenergy sustainability activities. Alicia also serves as the office lead for the Co-Optimization of Fuels and Engines (Co-Optima) initiative, a joint effort with the Vehicle Technologies Office focused on improving vehicle engine efficiency, performance and emissions. Alicia joined the Bioenergy Technologies Office as a Presidential Management Fellow in 2008. She received a master’s degree from the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan and a bachelor’s degree in Biology from Boston University.
Nicholas Medina is a Project Manager at Sandia National Laboratories, where he manages the Co-Optimization of Fuels and Engines (Co-Optima) Program. He brings more than 10 years’ experience in project/program management, IT, finance, and international policy/trade. Nicholas has managed various National Security technical programs at SNL which include Aviation Security, Explosive Detection Technologies, Radiation/Nuclear Detection Technologies, and Global Security Initiatives. Nicholas has a PMP from PMI, an MBA in management from New Mexico State University, and an undergraduate degree in International Business from New Mexico State University.
Technical team leads and their deputies plan and coordinate research being done at their respective laboratories and in collaboration with teams at other national laboratories. They are also responsible for keeping the Leadership team and Steering Committee informed of progress and impediments to achieving goals.
Derek Vardon is a senior research engineer and team leader in the National Bioenergy Centers at NREL. His main research focus is on catalyst design, materials characterization, and reaction engineering for the production of biofuels and biobased chemicals.
Vanessa Dagle is a senior research scientist at PNNL in the Chemical and Biological Processing Group. She obtained her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Caen, France. She has over 10 years of experience in the area of heterogeneous catalysis and chemical process development. Her current research focus is on the production of biofuels and biobased chemicals. Her work at PNNL has benefited clientele in both the government and private industry arena and has resulted in several patents, numerous journal articles and presentations.
Troy Hawkins leads the Fuels and Products Group in the Systems Assessment Center at Argonne National Laboratory. His group’s research focuses on energy and environmental life cycle assessment of fuels and products with a particular focus on biofuels. This research contributes to the continued development of the Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation (GREET) Model, which is used by DOE to guide R&D efforts and by a large number of stakeholders globally. Prior to joining Argonne National Laboratory, Troy worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development where he studied the life cycle environmental effects of a wide range of systems including biofuels, water and wastewater treatment, electric vehicles and batteries, electricity generation, consumer products, and Government procurement. He also spent several years working as a consultant on LCA-related projects for private and government clients, and he was a Research Fellow with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’ Industrial Ecology Program where he studied the environmental impacts embodied in international trade and performed an LCA of electric vehicles. Troy earned a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University.
Avantika is a process engineer with the Biorefinery Analysis group at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The group focuses on process design and economic analysis of biomass conversion pathways to produce environmentally sustainable and better performing fuels while expanding capabilities into additional bioproduct and polymer pathway routes. Avantika’s work with Co-optima has lately focused on refinery modeling to identify economic drivers for blending of biofuels with petroleum products to enable faster adoption. Before joining NREL in 2016, she worked at Aspen technology, Inc. in their Houston office. Avantika received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and her M.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Houston in 2013.
Dr. Magnus Sjöberg is a Principal Member of Technical Staff in the Engine Combustion Department at Sandia National Laboratories. He is also the AED Team Lead in DOE’s Co-Optima initiative. Magnus is Principal Investigator in Sandia’s Alternative Fuels Direct-Injection Spark-Ignition (DISI) Engine Lab, where he leads research on fuel effects on advanced SI engine combustion. This research spans from performance testing and exhaust-emissions measurements to detailed optical measurements of in-cylinder processes. One focus area is fuel-spray mixture formation and emissions-formation processes in stratified-charge SI combustion. Another focus area includes end-gas autoignition phenomena in both conventional stoichiometric combustion as well as in lean spark-assisted mixed-mode combustion. Prior research at Sandia involved fundamental research on fuel effects for Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) engine combustion. Magnus holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, where his studies focused on diesel-engine combustion and emissions-formation processes.
Josh Pihl is a senior research engineer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. His work focuses on developing emissions control solutions that enable high efficiency engines and alternative fuels to achieve emissions compliance. He relies on his background in chemical engineering and chemistry to identify the underlying chemical processes that control the performance of emissions control devices, and uses that information to develop improved catalyst formulations, aftertreatment system architectures, control strategies, and component models. He chairs the CLEERS (Crosscut Lean Exhaust Emissions Reduction Simulations) coordinating committee and serves as the Co-Optima Advanced Engine Development deputy team lead.
Jim Szybist leads the Fuel Property technical team within the Co-Optima initiative and is a principle investigator at Oak Ridge National Laboratory where he leads studies to better develop a better understanding of engine and fuel interactions. His current research interests include the autoignition processes that result in knock in spark ignited engines and autoignition in low temperature combustion engines and using kinetics to develop an improved conceptual understanding of the phenomenon. He received his Ph.D. from Penn State University in Fuel Science in in 2005 and then joined Oak Ridge National Laboratory as a postdoctoral appointee, where he is currently a Senior Research Scientist.
Gina Fioroni is a Senior Chemist in the Fuels and Combustion Science Group at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. This group’s research is focused on biofuels properties and fuel-engine interactions including biofuel quality and quality specifications, compatibility with modern engines, combustion mechanisms and kinetics, pollutant emissions effects, and leveraging fuel properties for design of more efficient engines. Gina’s recent work has focused on gasoline evaporation and heat of vaporization measurement, and experimental studies of autoignition and soot precursor formation mechanisms. Gina received her B.S. in Chemistry from Westfield State University and her M.S. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Vermont in 2005. She worked in the pharmaceutical industry prior to joining NREL in 2009.
Dr. Sibendu Som is a principal computational scientist and manager of the Multi-Physics Computational Research section at Argonne National Laboratory. He has more than a decade of experience in multi-physics and multi-scale modeling of piston engines and gas turbines on High Performance Computing (HPC) systems. Dr. Som’s research is focused on the development of nozzle-flow, spray, and combustion models, and applications of machine learning methods for engine combustion. His team is responsible for developing predictive simulation capabilities for OEMs to develop advanced high-efficiency low-emission engines. Several computational sub-models developed in his team are part of commercial computational codes. He is a co-founder of Argonne’s Virtual Engine Research Institute and Fuels Initiative (VERIFI) program which is aimed at providing predictive simulations for OEMs. Dr. Som has authored more than 140 journal and peer-reviewed conference papers with more than 4000 citations.
Juliane Mueller is a Research Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). She received her Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Tampere University of Technology in Finland and joined LBNL as the Luis W. Alvarez Postdoctoral Fellow in Computing Sciences in 2014. The main focus of Dr. Mueller’s research is the development of efficient algorithms for solving computationally expensive black-box optimization problems. These problems arise, for example, when parameters in time-consuming simulation models must be tuned and the number of parameter sets that can be tried during optimization is highly limited. Within Co-Optima, Dr. Mueller is developing these algorithms with the goal to identify the fuels and engine operating conditions that optimize engine performance as predicted by simulations.
Steering Committee members represent their laboratories on Co-Optima teams, communicate Co-Optima priorities to their laboratory management and staff, monitor progress toward research goals assign to their laboratories, and communicate laboratory changes that may affect Co-Optima progress toward goals.
Dr. Magdalena Ramirez-Corredores, is a Distinguished Scientific Researcher, in Idaho National Laboratory (INL) since 2016. She gained her previous industrial research experience at KiOR LLC, BP International Ltd and PDVSA. She is a fellow researcher with a successful track in the invention and development of emerging process technologies. Technical areas of expertise include: biomass conversion for the production of renewable fuels and green chemicals; oil refining (hydrocarbon conversion: isomerization, etherification, dehydrogenation and hydrogenation; catalysis; treatments, upgrading and hydroprocessing of unconventional oils; hydrotreatment; biocatalysis, nanocatalysis), separation processes (molecular and catalytic distillation; adsorbents and adsorption processes; extraction, etc); design, selection and commissioning of experimental rigs and equipment for material characterization, and for catalytic and process work. Management areas of expertise include: technology foresighting, competitive intelligence, knowledge management and science & technology strategy, management of multicultural, multidisciplinary and multitasking environments, and Academa – Industry engagement. She has 60 inventions described in 51 US patents (9 cases still pending in the United States) and more than 180 worldwide awarded patents, on chemical and physical processes,as well as on catalysts and catalytic technologies. She has authored 108 publications (2 books, 7 monographs, 63 articles and 36 conference papers). Her total number of citations (excluding all authors’ self‐citations) exceeds 1600, for an h-index of 22. She earned her doctorate in chemistry at the University of Bath and her BSc in Chemistry at Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas in 1974. She is also a recipient of the highest industrial research awards from her country of origin, Venezuela: the Exceptional Contributions Award, PDVSA 2001 and National Award on Technological Research, CONICIT 1991.
Bill Pitz is a Co-Optima steering committee member representing Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and is responsible for the development of an intellectual property (IP) plan for Co-Optima. Bill develops fuel-component and fuel-surrogate detailed chemical kinetic models to represent biofuels and their mixtures with conventional transportation fuels. These kinetic models when used in engine simulation codes allow the prediction of fuel effects in engines. Bill is the lead for the LLNL combustion kinetics team and a distinguished member of the technical staff at LLNL. He received the 2005 Colwell Merit Award and the 1991 Horning Award from the Society of Automotive Engineers. Bill received a B.Sc. and M. Sc. in Engineering Science from Purdue University and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.
Mr. Longman is currently the Manager of Engine Research at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL). This research spans internal combustion engine experimental study of fundamental combustion properties, low-temperature combustion, opposed piston engine GCI, heavy-duty IC engine biofuels, and large engine stationary and locomotive engine research, microturbines, and combined heat and power systems. He has been the principal investigator for several diesel engine research programs including large locomotive single cylinder engine emissions research, on-highway truck engines, and biofuel combustion characterization. He has led multi-disciplined, multi-organization teams investigating the integrated design of biofuels and engines simultaneously. These multi-disciplined teams contained both basic and applied researchers, and the approach ensures that an end product’s utilization will be compatible with existing in-service vehicles, as well as the low-emissions, high efficiency internal combustion engines of the future. He has more than 40 peer reviewed publications in engine performance and emissions research. Prior to joining Argonne, Mr. Longman spent 12 years at Caterpillar Inc. where he specialized in diesel fuel injection systems test and development. He also worked 7 years at AutoResearch Laboratories conducting diesel engine emissions and lubricant research for engine OEMs, major oil companies, and petroleum additive companies.
Andrew Sutton is a Synthetic Inorganic Chemist who received his M.Chem. and Ph.D. from the University of Manchester. After postdoctoral positions at UC Davis and UC Berkeley he found his way to Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico. In the 12 years he has been at LANL he has focused on applied chemistry to solve energy related problems and most recently has been developing atom efficient and selective catalytic routes to convert bio-derived molecules to multi-purpose carbon scaffolds which can be selectively defunctionalized to value-added products and a range of fuel types.
John Farrell joined the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in 2013 as laboratory program manager for vehicle technologies, overseeing NREL’s cross-cutting research in the sustainable transportation arena. He also served as the technical lead for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Co-Optimization of Fuels and Engines Initiative from 2014–2018.
In 2018, he gave a congressional briefing on how the Energy Department and its national labs are driving innovation to spur advances in the efficiency and performance of fuels, vehicles, and the broader transportation system.
Farrell came to NREL after 15 years at ExxonMobil’s Corporate Strategic Research Laboratory, where he held various technical, strategic planning, and program management positions and led research collaborations with numerous vehicle manufacturers, universities, and national labs.
John Holladay is the Transportation Sector Manager at Pacific Northwest national Laboratory (PNNL) as well as the Co-Director of the WSU-PNNL Bioproducts Institute. He received a PhD in Organic Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin. His research interests focus on carbon that will remain in the economy such as heavy-duty fuel (diesel, jet and ship), chemicals, and materials. Part of this research is re-imagining chemical processing under mild conditions and novel reactor designs that enable distributed processing of carbon-rich waste streams, including electrocatalytic upgrading. He is a former PNNL Inventor of the Year and a Distinguished Inventor of Battelle. Dr. Holladay has served as Chief Scientific Officer for the National Advanced Biofuels Consortium, Chief Operations Office for the National Alliance for Biofuels and Bioproducts, leadership of DOE’s crosscutting Co-Optimization of Fuels and Engines consortium.
Christopher Moen is a Senior Manager in the Combustion Research Facility at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, California, where he is also the deputy for the Transportation Energy & Systems research portfolio. His Engineering and Transportation Sciences Group is focused on (1) increasing efficiency and reducing emissions through combustion fundamentals and fuels for advanced internal combustion engines; (2) the science and safety of hydrogen behavior in solid materials for fuel cell technologies; and (3) discovery experiments and computational models of the mechanics of fracture and failure in engineered materials.
Dr. Arthur E. (Art) Pontau led the Combustion and Industrial Technologies Group, part of the Transportation Energy Center at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, California through mid-2017. The Group included programs in engine combustion, hydrogen and combustion technologies, thermal/fluid science and engineering, and energy systems engineering. He initiated, co-led, and supported the Co-Optimization of Fuels and Engines (Co-Optima) project for DOE until his retirement at the end of 2018.
Art joined Sandia in 1978 and spent his first 17 years in the Physical Research Division, first as a staff member and then as the manager. He undertook multiyear research programs addressing hydrogen and helium in materials, plasma-materials interactions, and the accelerator-based analysis of materials. He later managed Sandia’s Microfluidics Department, where basic microfluidics research was conducted, the liquid-phase MicroChemLab bioagent detection system was developed and multiple biosample processing approaches were patented. He then moved on to lead the Materials and Energy Sciences Group. In this role, he was responsible for research, development, and engineering organizations pursuing materials physics, hydrogen and metallurgical sciences, thermal/fluid science and engineering, and energy systems.
Dr. Paul Bryan is a Senior Scientist and Manager of the Biomass Program at SNL. He has more than 30 years of experience in chemical engineering R&D, management, and teaching, and is the SNL laboratory relationship manager for the DOE Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO). He has worked in industry (Chevron, Union Carbide), academia (UC-Riverside, UC-Berkeley, MIT, Colorado School of Mines) and government (U.S. DOE). Prior to joining Sandia, he was Director of BETO and before that, VP for Biofuels Technology at Chevron.