Women @ Energy Stem Rising
As an ongoing effort to engage women and underrepresented groups in Science, Technology, Engineering, or Math (STEM) related careers, the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE’s) Women @ Energy STEM Rising Initiative featured outstanding female researchers, including 28 from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). The STEM Rising profiles shows the breadth of PNNL’s scientific advances and highlights the diverse strengths that these scientists apply to both research and leadership.
Allison Campbell is the Associate Laboratory Director for Coastal and Marine Sciences at PNNL. As a researcher herself, Dr. Campbell is nationally recognized for her research in biomaterials. Read her profile here.
Erin Barker is the group manager for Applied Statistics and Computational Modeling and Applied Statistics and Mathematics. Read her profile here.
Jie Xiao is a chief scientist and group leader of Batteries and Materials Systems. She leads research thrusts on both practical applications and fundamental study of energy storage materials and systems, spanning from micro-batteries for acoustic fish tags to advanced battery technologies for vehicle electrification and grid energy storage. Read her profile here.
Nora Wang is an engineer in the Buildings and Connected Systems group. She has led a variety of research projects to reduce building energy use and carbon emissions, including energy efficiency ratings for commercial and residential buildings, connected technologies for smart homes, and integrating occupant health and productivity with energy technologies. Read her profile here.
Wendy Shaw is a scientist and division director of the Physical Sciences Division at PNNL. Her personal research is in materials science developing catalysts which enable renewable energies by seeking to understand and mimic the effects seen in enzymes and studying hard tissues, such as bones and teeth, in an effort to understand the role of proteins in creating materials with such unique properties. Read her profile here.
Alicia Gorton provides management and technical insight for marine renewable energy and offshore wind energy projects. Read more here.
Vassiliki-Alexandra (Vanda) Glezakou is a computational chemist whose research currently revolves around chemical separations, CO2 chemistry, relevant to carbon capture and sequestration and catalytic transformations. Read more here.
Brienne Seiner is currently a research scientist in the Global Nuclear Science and Technology group in the National Security Directorate. Read more here.
As a laboratory fellow and bioanalytical chemist at PNNL, Karen Wahl leads and develops analytical approaches to identify and characterize unknown biological materials. Her interdisciplinary biochemistry and chemistry research include using known chemicals’ characteristics and behaviors to identify unknown chemicals in unknown mixtures. Read more here.
Shadya Maldonado Rosado is passionate about merging the fields of digital information and national security to solve over-the-horizon problems. Shadya is a first-generation college graduate and combat veteran, with notable service as a paratrooper in the Army 82nd Airborne Division. Read more here.
As program manager for environmental intelligence, Jill Brandenberger studies the importance of the ocean in our daily lives. Her research interests include Earth and human system measurements and models; climate change impacts on national security; environmental security; resilience in Alaska/Arctic; and science to engineering: translating climate science to engineering design. Read more here.
As the Chief Science and Technology Officer and Director of Research Strategy for PNNL's Earth and Biological Sciences Directorate, Charlette Geffen provides scientific leadership for the development and execution of strategies to advance our science and technology programs and new science and engineering capabilities. Her work supports the DOE's mission to secure a national, sustainable energy system. Read more here.
As division director for Biological Sciences at PNNL, Katrina Waters divides her time between setting polices that help other scientists be more successful and her own research. Her work includes exploring how environmental chemicals affect longtime human health and understanding how the human body responds to seasonal infections like the flu and lethal infections like Ebola or avian flu. Read more here.
Alison Colotelo’s work involves building and working with multi-disciplinary teams that tackle a diverse set of problems including the effects of hydropower development on fishes. In addition to her technical work, Alison enjoys sharing her passion for science with the community through visits to local schools and participation in other outreach activities. Read more here.
Nancy Hess leads the development and implementation of the strategic vision for the EMSL’s user program in environmental and biological sciences. For nearly 30 years, the thrust of her research has been the application of molecular-level spectroscopic techniques. She has also participated in structural biology research on DNA repair proteins and environmental restoration characterization tasks. Read more here.
Ruby Leung models and analyzes the climate and the movement, distribution, and quantity of water in its various phases on the Earth. Her research includes using numerical models and observation data to probe how extreme events such as floods, droughts, thunderstorms, and hurricanes might change in a warmer climate accompanied by more moisture in the atmosphere. Read more here.
Gokcen Kestor is a senior research scientist in the high-performance computing group at PNNL. Her research solves computer science challenges in high-performance computing (HPC) software, such as scalability, energy efficiency, programmability and portability. Read more here.
A physicist by training, Amra Peles coordinates interdisciplinary teams in their efforts to understand the properties of materials and complex chemical systems and explain those properties through physics. This knowledge helps predict properties that can improve materials in devices, structures, tools, and machines we use every day. Read more here.
Sam Johnson uses computational chemistry to discover how catalysts use their structure and surroundings to make fuels from small molecules. Her work in the Physical Biosciences group at PNNL aims to identify catalysts that can store energy from intermittent energy sources like solar or wind power. Read more here.
Gert Patello is a senior project manager at PNNL. She oversees PNNL’s Isotope Program and serves as the main programmatic interface for PNNL with the DOE Office of Science Nuclear Physics Isotope Program. Her interests include management of medium- to high-risk radiochemical science projects and providing strategic leadership for sector portfolios. Read more here.
Sue Clark is a Battelle fellow and the chief science and technology officer and a chemist in the Energy and Environment Directorate at PNNL, with a joint appointment at Washington State University (WSU). Her current research areas include chemistry of radioactive waste systems and environmental chemistry. Read more here.
Genevra Harker-Klimeš' background in physical aspects of the ocean, like waves, tides, currents, and interaction with the atmosphere, led her to her current position as the division director for PNNL’s Coastal Sciences Division. At PNNL, she led a DOE initiative to support the development of environmental technologies for marine renewable energy devices. Read more here.
As an electrical engineer, Karen Studarus works to make the power system more flexible, affordable, sustainable, secure, and resilient. Her research focuses on many aspects of the electric grid and the necessary tradeoffs that we make to deliver reliable power with responsible economic and environmental footprints. Read more here.
Seemita Pal is currently a senior power systems cybersecurity engineer in the Electricity Infrastructure group of the Energy and Environment Directorate. Her work primarily focuses on understanding the cyber-vulnerabilities of the electric grid and developing technologies to identify, prevent, detect, respond, and recover from cyber-attacks. Read more here.
Draguna Vrabie is a control systems engineer with a passion for designing systems that learn from experience. As a chief scientist in optimization and control at PNNL, Dr. Vrabie uses dynamic systems theory and computer science to design adaptive control systems. Read more here.
Corinne Drennan works to solve environmental problems to reduce waste and reclaim energy from otherwise abandoned materials. As sector lead of PNNL’s bioenergy technologies programs, she builds teams that develop catalysts and processes for reclaiming energy from waste products like sewage sludge, manures, and waste gases. Read more here.
Patricia Paviet joined PNNL in October 2018 as the Radiological Materials technical group manager. She is a subject matter expert on used nuclear fuel reprocessing and is leading research in molten salt chemistry. Read more here.
Nikitha Radhakrishnan is an electrical engineer at PNNL with a focus on intelligent control systems design for energy-efficient buildings and resilient power distribution systems. Read more here.