Throughout his 24-year career, Sridhar Seetharaman has successfully built strategic partnerships and executed key initiatives across industry, government and the academic community. He has maintained a consistent focus on the expansion and enrichment of transdisciplinary collaborations by capitalizing on existing research capabilities, regional and national strengths, and matching those to mission-driven needs of heavy industry to become more energy efficient and competitive. His technical expertise is in manufacturing of metals, especially of iron and steel, which is one of the key industrial sectors of focus for EPIXC.

Seetharaman is a member of the U.S. DOE Industrial Technology Innovation Advisory Committee and currently holds a joint faculty appointment at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. He is also a Distinguished Member and Fellow of the Association for Iron and Steel Technology. He was formerly a senior advisor at the U.S. DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Seetharaman has had significant experience with road mapping and strategic planning, including participation in the Roadmaps for U.S. DOE’s National Alliance for Water Innovation Water HUB and AIST’s Steel Roadmap for NIST and in the past U.S. DOE’s Multi-Year-Program-Plan. As EPIXC CEO, his responsibilities are primarily to coordinate with the rest of the C-Suite to set the strategic vision for EPIXC and ensure that it aligns with industrial needs and DOE’s priorities.

With a more than 30-year career spanning roles in telecommunications, electric utilities and university research, Winn brings a unique blend of technical, operational and strategic expertise. His background includes managing service delivery and technical support teams, program management of multimillion-dollar research projects and work as a reactor operator and engineering technician in the nuclear power industry — experience that laid a strong foundation for his work supporting EPIXC.

A research program manager at Arizona State University since 2019, he has successfully overseen multimillion-dollar federally funded research projects, including high-profile DOE, NSF and DARPA initiatives. In this role, Winn contributed to the winning proposal that funded EPIXC and served as the EPIXC program manager helping to establish the institute. As the EPIXC COO he now plans, directs and manages all operational and financial aspects for EPIXC, providing leadership and strategic vision consistent with the EPIXC mission.

Winn holds a Project Management Professional certification and is completing a Master of Organizational Leadership.

Robin Hammond joined EPIXC during the proposal stage and with the team’s success now serves as chief education and workforce development officer leading the institute’s technical education and workforce strategy. Hammond brings over 30 years of workforce development and higher education experience in career and talent development, entrepreneurship and organizational leadership to help individuals and organizations optimize their most valuable resources — their people. She works with the Manufacturing USA Education and Workforce Development Network of Manufacturing Innovation Institutes to accelerate the development of an advanced manufacturing workforce and to help create and preserve jobs. Experienced with startup operations, Hammond founded an organization that helped global companies cultivate talent pipelines and successfully recruit top technical talent, which initially served 6,000 and grew to serve to more than 32,000 learners annually, reaching over 14,000 employers ranging from Fortune 500 organizations to small, local startups.

Hammond’s scholarship that informs EPIXC’s workforce efforts includes building innovative career programs, support structures and navigation models to aid retention and broadening participation in the engineering workforce. Hammond holds a BA from Arizona State University.

Michael Baldea has served as chief technology officer of EPIXC since October 2023. In this role, he leads the institute’s technical strategy; defines research, development and demonstration directions; and oversees the roadmapping process for electrifying manufacturing. His work bridges academic research and industrial innovation, accelerating the transition to electricity-driven processes. An expert in mathematical modeling and optimization, Baldea’s work has focused on manufacturing systems with high electricity usage. He began his career at Praxair’s (now Linde) Technology Center, where he concentrated on the design and operation of cryogenic air separation units. He later joined the University of Texas at Austin, where he is the Kenneth A. Kobe Professor in the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering. He holds a doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota and is internationally recognized for his contributions to process systems engineering.

Maria Curry-Nkansah brings extensive experience in industrial technology development, marking and innovation adoption strategy, with a strong focus on the petrochemical sector. Over the course of her career, she has held a range of leadership and technical roles across the chemical sector and two national laboratories, including chief operating officer, business development manager, market development manager, research group leader and product development researcher. She has served on numerous technology and education boards and has contributed to winning federal proposals totaling more than $450 million.

As the chief marketing and analysis officer of EPIXC, Curry-Nkansah leads market dynamic analysis, business model evaluation including commercial adoption readiness levels and manufacturing readiness levels, and the identification of nontechnical enablers critical to accelerating the adoption of electrified and hybrid process heating technologies across five industrial sectors.

She also oversees the institute’s communications-wide dissemination strategy and serves as the lead coordinator for technical analyses conducted by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory on behalf of EPIXC.

Curry-Nkansah holds a doctorate in physical inorganic chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MBA in marketing and finance from the University of Chicago.