Director of the Energy Processes and Materials Division in the Energy & Environment Directorate at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Tom has been with Eaton since 2001.  He started his career with Eaton in Seattle Washington and spent 11 years in various sales roles as a distributor sales specialist and serving in the construction, Industrial, and OEM markets.  Tom left the Northwest and moved to Wisconsin in 2010 to work with Eaton’s Industrial Control Division as a product manager for variable frequency drives.  In 2013 Eaton acquired Cooper and Tom moved into a regional marketing manager role as part of the Cooper Sales Integration team.  Following his three years on the integration team, Tom moved back to the Industrial Control Division to take the division marketing manager role and was responsible for driving the divisions sales initiatives, channel growth, price attainment, and marketing communications.  In 2018 Tom moved into the services sales organization as the central region director of sales and added the responsibility of Eaton’s national service account sales organization in 2022.  In 2023 Tom moved into his current role. 

Leah Rubin Shen oversees legislative, political, and regulatory engagement in the Western region of the United States for Advanced Energy United, a national business association representing the full range of advanced energy technologies and services, both grid-scale and distributed. Prior to joining Advanced Energy United, Leah worked for U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) as a AAAS/ACS Science & Technology Policy Fellow and then as his lead advisor on energy, environment, and science policy. Leah started her career as a chemist and holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied the electrochemistry of new materials for fuel cells, and a B.A. in chemistry and music from Case Western Reserve University.

Jill Martin is a Fellow in the Packaging and Specialty Plastics business of The Dow Chemical Company.  For the past 26 years, she has served in both research and development (R&D) and technical service and development (TS&D) for the North America Packaging and Specialty Plastics and Hydrocarbons (P&SP&H) business.  She began her career in R&D working on polyethylene product development including hot melt adhesives, automotive UTH applications, and hygiene absorbent products before moving into a role in New Business Development focusing on technical and commercial evaluation of external technologies.  In 2003 she joined the TS&D group working directly with customers and brand owners in the hygiene, rigid and flexible packaging and medical device markets before transitioning into her current role aligned to developing plastics for a circular economy.  In this role she has responsibility for development of products and partnerships within the packaging value chains including the private and public sectors to enable acceleration of scalable solutions.  In her spare time, she looks to re-establish herself on the tennis courts and in local 5k and 10k runs supporting causes related to ending food insecurity and female empowerment.

Industry Specialization – Industrial Manufacturing, Consumer Marketing

Senior Vice President, JLL

Managing the installation of a 2.8 MW Cogeneration facility for HOST Hotels & Resorts and various Fuel Cell installations for JPMC

Amanda Petford-Long is an Argonne Distinguished Fellow in the Materials Science Division (MSD) at Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago. In addition to her own research program, she serves as the Division Director of MSD and leads Argonne’s Microelectronics activities. She has a D.Phil (PhD) in Materials Science from the University of Oxford and a B.Sc in Physics from University College, London. She moved to Argonne in 2005 from the University of Oxford where she was a full professor in the Materials Department. Her research focuses on nanomaterials and a particular emphasis is on magnetic and resistive-switching nanostructures with potential applications in information storage technology, and on the use of in-situ TEM. She has published over 360 scientific papers. She is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Royal Microscopical Society, and the American Physical Society and is a Professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at Northwestern University

Dr. Yarom Polsky is the Director of the Manufacturing Science Division (MSD) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He is also a joint faculty member at the Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary and Graduate Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

MSD’s applied research efforts include the development, implementation, and scale-up of next-generation manufacturing approaches that support DOE’s mission to ensure America’s security and prosperity by addressing its energy, environmental, and nuclear challenges through transformative science and technology solutions. The division has four primary focus areas: composite science and technology, industrial efficiency and decarbonization, precision manufacturing and machining, and secure and digital manufacturing.

In his capacity as director, Dr. Polsky leads a globally recognized team that operates two Department of Energy (DOE) national user facilities: the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility (MDF) and the Carbon Fiber Technology Facility (CFTF). Established in 2011, the MDF is focused on performing early-stage research and development to improve the energy and material efficiency, productivity, and competitiveness of American manufacturers. The CFTF was established in 2013 and is DOE’s only designated user facility for carbon fiber innovation.

Dr. Polsky joined ORNL in 2009 and has held multiple positions including Section Head for Energy Systems Integration and Controls; manager for ORNL’s fossil energy and carbon management and geothermal energy programs; and manager of the ORNL Laboratory Directed Research and Development program. He has served in various external scientific leadership capacities such as the Process Innovation and Intensification Topic Area Lead for the National Alliance for Water innovation (NAWI), the Technical Standing Committee for the Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute (CESMII), and has contributed to the development of multiple DOE roadmaps and multi-year program plans including the DOE Subsurface Science, Technology, Engineering, and R&D Crosscut (SubTER) as well as the DOE Office of Electricity’s Sensor Technologies and Data Analytics multi-year program plan. Over the course of his career, he has earned 14 patents and has authored more than 70 peer-reviewed publications. Prior to joining ORNL, he worked at Sandia National Laboratories and Schlumberger.

Dr. Polsky holds a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, an M.S. in Mechanical Energy from Rice University, and B.A. in Physics from Rice University