Dr. Christopher “Scott” McWhorter is Lead for Federal Energy Strategy and National Laboratory Partnerships and a Senior Research Engineer within the Strategic Energy Institute (SEI) at the Georgia Institute of Technology. In this role, he leads Georgia Tech’s federal energy strategy, national laboratory engagement, and large-scale interdisciplinary research development efforts, helping position the Institute to compete for transformative federal research investments across the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Department of Defense (DOD), National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of Commerce, and other federal agencies. He works closely with faculty, industry, national laboratories, and government stakeholders to develop strategic partnerships, advance technology commercialization, and expand Georgia Tech’s research portfolio in energy, manufacturing, critical minerals, artificial intelligence, and national security. 

Dr. McWhorter brings more than twenty-five years of experience spanning national laboratories, federal government, academia, and technology startups. His technical expertise encompasses hydrogen and fuel cell technologies, advanced energy storage materials, critical minerals and supply chains, grid modernization, advanced manufacturing, sensors and spectroscopy, technology commercialization, and strategic energy policy. Throughout his career, he has led the development and management of multidisciplinary research programs valued at hundreds of millions of dollars while helping organizations secure more than $750 million in competitive federal funding. 

At Georgia Tech, Dr. McWhorter has played a leading role in developing major institutional initiatives focused on hydrogen, critical minerals, advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence, and federal research partnerships. He serves as Co-Principal Investigator on a $20 million Department of Defense program focused on the manufacturing science of galvanic aluminum-based hydrogen generation technologies and has led numerous efforts to connect Georgia Tech researchers with federal agencies, national laboratories, industry partners, and regional innovation ecosystems. He previously served as Interim Managing Director of the Georgia Artificial Intelligence in Manufacturing (Georgia AIM) initiative and Interim Executive Director of the Georgia Tech Manufacturing 4.0 Consortium, where he expanded industry engagement and strengthened partnerships across the manufacturing sector. 

Prior to joining Georgia Tech, Dr. McWhorter served in multiple executive and scientific leadership roles at the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL), including Director of Strategic Programs, Division Director for Energy Science and Technology, Director of the Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program, and Senior Advisory Scientist. He managed research portfolios exceeding $75 million annually and led multidisciplinary organizations of more than 65 scientists, engineers, and technical staff. During his tenure, he significantly expanded SRNL’s clean energy research portfolio, helped establish the laboratory’s Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative, and played a central role in the formation of several Manufacturing USA institutes, including the RAPID Manufacturing Institute and CESMII Smart Manufacturing Institute. 

Dr. McWhorter served as a Science and Clean Energy Technical Advisor for the Hydrogen Storage Program at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office. In that role, he provided technical leadership for a research portfolio exceeding $20 million annually, contributed to national hydrogen storage strategies and performance targets, guided funding opportunity development, and supported the advancement of next-generation hydrogen storage technologies. His work helped shape DOE research priorities that continue to influence the commercialization of hydrogen and fuel cell systems today. 

Dr. McWhorter’s research contributions span hydrogen storage materials, advanced energy systems, critical minerals recovery, spectroscopy and sensing technologies, advanced materials characterization, and microfluidic systems. He has authored numerous peer-reviewed publications, technical reports, invited chapters, and patents, including foundational contributions to hydrogen storage technologies, energy systems analysis, optical sensing platforms, and advanced materials processing. His recent work has focused on critical minerals recovery from mining and industrial waste streams, domestic supply chain resilience, and the integration of advanced manufacturing and artificial intelligence technologies to strengthen U.S. energy and industrial competitiveness. 

In addition to his research and leadership activities, Dr. McWhorter is a recognized national leader in hydrogen and clean energy deployment. He serves as Chairman of the Board of the Southeast Hydrogen Energy Alliance (SHEA), where he has helped build one of the nation’s largest regional hydrogen stakeholder networks and advance strategies supporting hydrogen infrastructure, workforce development, and commercialization across the Southeastern United States. He also serves on numerous advisory boards and technical review panels for federal agencies, manufacturing institutes, universities, and industry organizations. 

Dr. McWhorter earned a Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from Louisiana State University and completed an ORISE Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Savannah River National Laboratory. Throughout his career, he has been recognized for excellence in research leadership, business development, technology transfer, and strategic program development, receiving multiple laboratory and national awards for advancing clean energy innovation and commercialization. His work continues to focus on accelerating the development and deployment of technologies that strengthen U.S. energy security, manufacturing competitiveness, and economic prosperity. Selected Recent Publications: 1. Tang, Y.; McWhorter, S. Kaolin Tailings Are Georgia's Hidden Gateway to Critical Minerals in AI Era. Atlanta Journal-Constitution, December 19, 2025. https://www.ajc.com/opinion/2025/12/kaolin-tailings-are-georgias-hidden-gateway-to-critical-minerals-in-ai-era/ (accessed 2026-06-01). 2. Tang, Y. and McWhorter, S. "How the US Can Mine Its Own Critical Minerals — without Digging New Holes." The Conversation, 30 July 2025, https://theconversation.com/how-the-us-can-mine-its-own-critical-minerals-without-digging-new-holes-252609. 3. Grady, C., McWhorter, S., Sulic, M., Sprik, S.J., Thorton, M.J., Brooks, K.P., Tamburello, D.A., Design Tool for Estimating Adsorbent Hydrogen Storage System Characteristics for Light-Duty Fuel Cell Vehicles. Int. J. Hydrogen Energy, 47, 29847, 2022. 4. Zidan, R., McWhorter, S., Enabling a Flexible Grid with Increased Penetration of DER: Techno-economic Analysis of Metal Hydride Thermochemical Energy Storage Integrated with Stirling Engine for Grid Energy Storage Applications. United States: N. p., 2020. Web. doi:10.2172/1632839.

Benoit Montreuil is the Coca-Cola Material Handling & Distribution Chair and Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. He also serves as Director of the Physical Internet Center and Executive Director of the Supply Chain & Logistics Institute. 

Dr. Montreuil is leading the International Physical Internet Initiative, engaging academic, industry and government leaders worldwide into research and innovation projects on smart, hyperconnected and sustainable logistics, supply chains, transportation, businesses and regions. 

His main research interests generically lie in developing concepts, methodologies and technologies for creating, optimizing, transforming and enabling businesses, supply chains and value creation networks to thrive in a fast evolving hyperconnected world. 

He stands at the crossroads of industrial and systems engineering; operations research; computer sciences; operations, logistics, supply chain, strategic management; and sustainability science. His research builds mostly on a synthesis of optimization modeling and mathematical programming, discrete & agent-based simulation modeling, systems science & design theory. 

Dr. Montreuil is a world-renowned scientist who has introduced in collaboration with students and colleagues an imposing set of paradigm-challenging leading edge contributions through nearly four decades of research, shared through 250 scientific publications, 250 scientific communications and numerous keynote speeches at international scientific and professional conferences. He has extensive advisory, entrepreneurial and collaborative research experience with industry and government. 

Through his career, he has received numerous awards, recently including DC Velocity’s Rainmaker of the Year and The Physical Internet Pioneer Award for his outstanding and inspiring vision. 

From 2000 to 2014, Dr. Montreuil has held the Canada Research Chair in Business Engineering. He is a founding member of the CIRRELT Interuniversity Research Centre on Enterprise Networks, Logistics and Transportation. He is also past president of the College-Industry Council on Material Handling Education and its Liaison to the Board of Governors of MHI, the North American industry association of material handling, logistics and supply chain solutions and technology providers. 

Dr. Montreuil graduated in 1978 from the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR). He earned a master’s and a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Georgia Tech in 1980 and 1982 respectively. After serving on the industrial engineering faculty of UQTR and Purdue University, from 1988 to 2014, he was a Professor of operations and decisions systems in the faculty of Business Administration at Université Laval in Quebec City, Canada.

Ben Emerson completed his Ph. D. in Aerospace Engineering from Georgia Tech in August, 2013. Since then, Ben has worked as a Research Engineer at the Ben T. Zinn Combustion Lab at Georgia Tech. Ben’s research portfolio includes projects on combustion instabilities, alternative fuels, and combustion system R&D with a core focus and motivation of cleaner combustion. Ben’s research primarily consists of three core competencies, which are experimental combustion system development, combustor diagnostics, and combustion theory and modeling. Ben’s combustion system development work spans a wide variety of applications, from small lab-scale burners to combustor rigs that test full-scale gas turbine combustor hardware. His combustor diagnostics work encompasses the state of the art optical diagnostic techniques for reacting flow field measurements and imaging, and aims to implement those techniques in both laboratory-scale and large-scale rig tests. Finally, Ben’s combustion theory and modeling work is geared towards analysis of experimental datasets, development of reduced-order engineering tools, and the development of a suite of hydrodynamic stability analysis tools. Together, these core competencies form the pillars of Ben’s research, which facilitates the design of cleaner-burning combustion systems.

Jinho Park, Ph.D. is a Senior Research Scientist of  the Resilient Infrastructure and Supply Chain (RISC) Unit, the Cybersecurity, Information Protection, and Hardware Evaluation Research (CIPHER) Laboratory at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). At the GTRI, he has been participating in several industry- and state-sponsored projects related to energy, environmental, and health technologies. Jinho has been working on design/synthesis/characterization of functional materials along with their applications toward energy storage systems (Li-ion batteries, all-solid state batteries, supercapacitors, and phase change materials), energy conversion systems (fuel cells, water electrolyzers, and ammonia cracking), multifunction sensors, etc. He is also involved in commercialization of for novel technologies through increasing their TRL/CRL as well as developing a commercialization roadmap.

Prior to joining the GTRI, he has worked in School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and School of Mechanical Engineering of the Georgia Tech as a graduate research assistant and a postdoctoral fellow, respectively, conducting researches in materials for advanced energy storage/conversion systems. Notably, he has worked with several automotive companies, such as General Motors, Toyota Motor Corp., and Nissan Motor Company for seeking to a high-performance fuel cell electrocatalysts and with Samsung Electronics for a research of a next-generation Li-ion battery.

Jinho Park holds a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science degrees in Chemical Engineering from Sogang University (Seoul, South Korea), a Master of Science degree in Energy, Environmental and Chemical Engineering from Washington University (St. Louis, Missouri), and Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, Georgia).

Dr. Chance retired from Global Thermostat at the end of 2022, where he served as a Senior Science Advisor. He continues at the Georgia Institute of Technology where he serves as an Adjunct Professor. Dr. Chance began his career with Honeywell Corporation, holding a number of research positions including Research Manager for Electronic Materials.

In 1986, he joined Exxon as the Director of their Polymers and Fluids Laboratory, later serving as Division Manager for their Paramins Technology division, and as Distinguished Scientific Advisor in ExxonMobil’s Corporate Strategic Research Laboratories. Dr. Chance retired from ExxonMobil in 2006 and joined the Georgia Institute of Technology as a faculty member with a joint appointment in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, continuing also as Distinguished Scientific Advisor Emeritus at ExxonMobil from 2006-2009. 

He joined Algenol Biofuels (2009-2019) as Executive Vice President for Engineering. Dr. Chance's scientific interests are focused on CO² capture and utilization, including Direct Air Capture, as a mitigation strategy for climate change. 

Dr. Chance has organized several international scientific meetings and served on numerous university and industrial advisory boards. He has published over 150 peer-reviewed articles, edited two books, and authored over 30 patents. He was elected Fellow in The American Physical Society in 1988 and was the 2018 recipient of the Lawrence B. Evans Award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, an institute level award for career achievement.

Marta Hatzell is a professor of mechanical engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. Prior to starting at Georgia Tech in August of 2015, she was a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Material Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign. During her post doc, she worked in the Braun Research Group on research at the interface between colloid science and electrochemistry. She completed her Ph.D. at Penn state University in the Logan Research Group. Her Ph.D. explored environmental technology for energy generation and water treatment. During graduate school she was an NSF and PEO Graduate Research Fellow. 

Currently her research group focuses on exploring the sustainable catalysis and separations, with applications spanning from solar energy conversion to desalination. She is an active member of the American Chemical Society, the Electrochemical Society, ASEEP, and ASME. Hatzell was awarded the NSF Early CAREER award in 2019 for her work on distributed solar-fertilizers, attended the 2019 US Frontiers of Engineering Symposium through the National Academy of Engineering, and was awarded the 2020 Sloan Research Fellowships in Chemistry.