Earth, Energy & Environmental Science

Staff Page • Chemist. Biography Bryan R. Wygant is a Postdoctoral Appointee at Sandia National Laboratories in the Photovoltaics & Materials Tech organization. He received his B.S. degree in Chemistry from Texas Tech University in 2014 and received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Texas at Austin in 2020. His research...

Staff Page • Principal R&D Engineer. Biography Budi Gunawan is a principal research engineer in the Hydrodynamic Energy Systems Program at Sandia National Laboratories. He has experience in environmental fluid dynamics, hydraulic engineering, and marine and hydrokinetic energy. Since 2011, Budi has overseen various projects involving hydrodynamic measurements and modeling, component and system...

Staff Page • Principal Member Technical Staff, Resilient Energy and Distributed Systems Integration. Biography Dr. Birk Jones has accumulated over two decades of experience committed to improving the construction, operation, and utilization of buildings and the electric grid. His comprehensive professional history includes roles as a design engineer, construction engineer, and research staff...

Staff Page • Materials Scientist. Biography Ramesh Koripella is a Principal Member of Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories since 2011. He is a materials scientist and engineer with more than 30 years R&D experience in electronic components and power sources development. In the energy storage systems group, he performs technical analysis of...

Staff Page • R&D Engineer & Data Scientist. Biography Carlos Michelen is a senior member of the technical staff in Sandia National Laboratories’ Hydrodynamic Energy Systems Program. His research interests include machine learning and data science methods for marine renewable energy applications, open source code development, statistical methods, computational fluid mechanics, and computational...

Staff Page • R&D Mechanical Engineer. Biography Cesar R Castillo, PhD, is a R&D Mechanical Engineer in the Hydrodynamic Energy Systems Program at Sandia National Laboratories. Cesar’s research focuses on the use of numerical modeling to characterize the performance and environmental effects of marine and hydrokinetic devices, and on the development of portals...

Staff Page • Principle Engineering Technologist. Biography Charles D. Robinson is an engineering technologist in the Photovoltaics (PV) and Materials Technology Program at Sandia National Laboratories. He has facilitated photovoltaic module research activities at Sandia’s Photovoltaic Systems Evaluation Laboratory (PSEL) since 2011. His focus is on improvement of characterization methodologies in support of...

Staff Page • Lead Modeling and Simulation Analyst & Developer. Biography Chris Chartrand is a member of the Hydrodynamic Energy Systems Program at Sandia National Laboratories. His research concentrates on the implementation and development of numerical models for simulating wave, tidal, and current energy capture devices. He is the developer of the WEC...

Staff Page • Rotor Wake Lead. Biography Chris is a member of the Wind Energy Design and Experimentation Department at Sandia National Laboratories. He leads the Rotor Wake project for experimental testing of the NRT rotor and producing validation data for DOE multi-lab projects. He also leads the development of two new experiments...

Staff Page • Distinguished Member of Technical Staff. Biography Dr. Clifford Hansen is a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff in the Renewable and Distributed Systems Integration Program. He leads efforts to develop reusable open source software capabilities for renewable energy systems. Current projects include pvlib-python (https://github.com/pvlib/pvlib-python.git) for solar power modeling, pvanalytics (https://github.com/pvlib/pvanalytics.git)...

Staff Page • Electrical Engineer. Biography Cody J. Newlun is a Senior Member of the Technical Staff in the Electric Power Systems Research Department at Sandia National Laboratories. He received a B.A. in physics with a minor in mathematics from Hasting College. He received a M.Eng. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering with an...

Staff Page • Principal Member, Technical Staff – S&E Cybersecurity R&D. Biography Craig Rodine is Principal Investigator for multiple DOE-funded projects, directing R&D on communications and cybersecurity applied at the ‘converged energy edge’. These projects cover a range of areas and interests, including Electric Vehicle (EV) Charging Infrastructure; the foundations of cybersecurity in...

Staff Page • Chemist. Biography Cy Fujimoto is a Principle Member of the Technical Staff in the Nanoscale Sciences Department at Sandia National Laboratories. Cy’s work focuses on developing membrane separators for electrochemical applications. In the Office of Electricity’s program, he is developing membranes for several flow battery chemistries and partners with various...

Staff Page • R&D Mechanical Engineer. Biography Damian Gallegos-Patterson joined Sandia National Laboratories’ Hydrodynamic Energy Systems Program in 2022. Damian’s work focuses primarily on test coordination and analysis for wave energy converters (WECs). Damian received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering (2019) from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology and a...

Staff Page • R&D Electrical Engineer. Biography Daniel Gaebele is a R&D electrical engineer at Sandia National Laboratories’ Hydrodynamic Energy Systems Program. His research focuses on wave energy converter (WEC) control co-design and control co-optimization, sociotechnical assessments of WECs for ocean-based industry applications, and WEC seasonal deployments. Daniel Gaebele received his bachelor’s and...

Staff Page • Research Engineer. Biography Daniel Riley is a research engineer in the Photovoltaics (PV) and Materials Technology Program at Sandia National Laboratories. The scope of Daniel’s work includes PV modules and systems with focus in data acquisition, characterization, and modeling. Daniel has also developed skills for characterizing and modeling non-standard PV...

Staff Page • Rotor Blade and Wind Plant Aerodynamics Lead. Biography Dr. David Maniaci is a principal member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories and is the rotor blade and wind plant aerodynamics lead in the Wind Energy Computational Sciences Department. He is currently leading efforts on the verification, validation and...

Staff Page • Electrical Engineer. Biography David Rosewater received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the Montana Tech of the University of Montana, Butte, MT, USA, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA. He currently works as a...

Staff Page • Principal Member, Technical Staff. Biography David Schoenwald is a Principal Member of the Technical Staff in the Electric Power Systems Research Department at Sandia National Laboratories. Dr. Schoenwald focuses on control system design to improve dynamic stability of electric power systems. He also develops performance standards for grid-scale energy storage...

Staff Page • Postdoctoral Appointee. Biography Dominic Forbush, PhD, is a postdoctoral appointee in the Hydrodynamic Energy Systems Program at Sandia National Laboratories. Dominic’s research focuses on the control, modeling, and the development of innovative solutions for wave energy convertors (WECs). Particularly, Dominic is involved in developing and supporting open-source WEC modeling tools,...

Staff Page • Postdoctoral Appointee. Biography Dongyoung Kim, PhD, is a postdoctoral appointee in the Hydrodynamic Energy Systems Program at Sandia National Laboratories. Dongyoung’s research focuses on the numerical assessment and investigation on marine and hydrokinetic (MHK) devices. He works on mid- and high-fidelity simulations, design optimization, river and tidal resource characterization, computational...

Staff Page • Materials Scientist, Battery Materials Lead. Biography Erik D. Spoerke, Ph.D. is the Energy Storage Materials Thrust Lead in Sandia National Laboratories’ Grid Energy Storage Program, a Principal R&D Materials Scientist in the Electronic, Optical, and Nano Materials Department at Sandia, and a Research Associate Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering...

Staff Page • Research & Development Aeronautical Engineer. Biography Ernesto Camarena obtained his PhD in aeronautics and astronautics from Purdue University in 2019. There he developed multiscale structural mechanics methodology for piezoelectric composites. That same year, he joined the Wind Energy Design and Experimentation department, where he now leads the micromechanical modeling effort...

Staff Page • Research & Development Mechanical Engineer. Biography Evan Anderson is a postdoctoral researcher in the Wind Energy Design and Experimentation Department at Sandia National Laboratories. He grew up in Wyoming and received his master’s degree and PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of Wyoming in 2010 and 2019. His research...