Scientific breakthroughs and emerging trends to watch in 2024: Expert webinar and panel

Dr. Allen leads an informatics team focused on modeling and managing data for complex biomolecular systems with extensive experience in pathogen characterization, transcript analysis in host response, and machine learning for small molecule drug discovery.  He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University after conducting his thesis work at The Institute for Genomic Research.

Yiying Wu received his B.S. in chemical physics from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1998, and his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley in 2003 with Prof. Peidong Yang. He then did his postdoctoral research with Prof. Galen D. Stucky at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and joined the chemistry faculty at The Ohio State University in the summer of 2005. He was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2011 and to full professor in 2014. From 2017 to 2022, he was appointed as the Leet Endowed Chair. He has been serving as an associate editor for ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces since 2013. His group focuses on materials chemistry and interface synthesis for energy conversion and storage. He is the inventor of the one-electron K-O2 battery and pioneered solar batteries that integrate solar harvesting with energy storage. He received Cottrell Scholar Award in 2008, NSF CAREER Award in 2010, CAPA Biomatik Distinguished Faculty Award in 2014, Franklin County Commissioner’s Award in 2014, Midwest Energy News “40 under 40” in 2015, Nano Research Top Paper Award in 2019, and ACS Akron Award in 2019. His invention of K-air battery received DOE Clean Energy Prize in 2014.

Dr. Lumsdaine is Director of the Innovation Network for Fusion Energy (INFUSE), and Leader of the Fusion Engineering Group in the Fusion Energy Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He has served as Lead Engineer for the Materials Plasma Exposure eXperiment (MPEX) facility – a world class linear plasma-material interaction device planned for future operation at ORNL. Dr. Lumsdaine received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan.  He has served as an Associate Professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg, Texas, and was the Research and Development Manager for the Nanomechanics Operations of Agilent Technologies and MTS Nano Instruments. He has over 100 publications in the fields of fusion technology, nanomechanics, smart structures, design optimization and vibration damping.

Janet M. Sasso earned her B.S. in Biology from The Ohio State University. She also holds her Master of Public Health from OSU where she focused her research on public health equity and education. She joined CAS in 2006 as an Information Scientist in the life sciences department curating pharmacology, pharmaceutical, environmental science, and toxicological research information. She is passionate about scientific communication to accelerate scientific analysis and inspire advancement worldwide. 

Kevin Hughes earned a BS in chemical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and a PhD in chemical engineering from Cornell University. He has over 10 years of industrial technology development experience in semiconductor manufacturing, complex fluids, and energy technology, with a specialization in materials science and applied physics. He joined CAS in 2023 as an Information Scientist and passionate about helping advance science across the globe.

Angela Zhou is an Information Scientist at CAS. She earned her Ph.D. in Molecular Pharmacology and toxicology from University of Southern California. She was further trained as a cell biologist at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and worked in the area of cancer biology at Harvard Medical School. She was a faculty member at Missouri State University and Denison University prior to joining CAS.