The Tong Lab tackles challenges in the interdisciplinary areas of bioresource engineering and sustainable chemistry. We develop innovative technologies for producing chemicals, materials, energy, and fuels from renewable resources.

Current research interests include:

• Functional biomaterials for high-efficiency circular economy
• Platform chemicals and hydrocarbon fuels from renewable resources
• Sustainable process control and modeling
• Nano-biomaterial synthesis and self-assembling
• Polymer degradation and recycling

Disciplines:

• Materials and Nanotechnology

• Energy and Sustainability

Valerie Thomas is the Anderson-Interface Chair of Natural Systems and Professor in the H. Milton School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, with a joint appointment in the School of Public Policy. 

Dr. Thomas's research interests are energy and materials efficiency, sustainability, industrial ecology, technology assessment, international security, and science and technology policy. Current research projects include low carbon transportation fuels, carbon capture, building construction, and electricity system development. Dr. Thomas is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and of the American Physical Society. She has been an American Physical Society Congressional Science Fellow, a Member of the U.S. EPA Science Advisory Board, and a Member of the USDA/DOE Biomass Research and Development Technical Advisory Committee. 

She has worked at Princeton University in the Princeton Environmental Institute and in the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies, and at Carnegie Mellon University in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy.

Dr. Thomas received a B. A. in physics from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Cornell University.

Elsa Reichmanis is Anderson Chair in Chemical Engineering in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Lehigh University. Prior to joining Lehigh, she was Professor and Pete Silas Chair in Chemical Engineering in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She started her independent career at Bell Labs where she was Bell Labs Fellow and Director of the Materials Research Department. She received her PhD and BS degrees in chemistry from Syracuse University. Her research interests include the chemistry, properties, and application of materials technologies for photonic and electronic applications. She has had impact in the design of new imaging chemistries for advanced lithographic applications, and designed one of the first readily accessible and manufacturable polymers for advanced silicon device manufacturing using 193 nm lithography. 

The Reichmanis research group is currently exploring polymeric and hybrid organic/inorganic materials chemistries for a range of device and electronic and sustainable energy applications. Her research, at the interface of chemical engineering, chemistry, materials science, optics, and electronics, spans from fundamental concept to technology development and implementation, with particular focus on polymeric and nanostructured materials for advanced technologies. Currently, efforts aim to identify fundamental parameters that will enable sub-nanometer scale dimensional control of organic, polymer and/or hybrid materials for applications including transistor devices, photovoltaics, and high-capacity energy storage. 

Reichmanis was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1995 and has participated in several National Research Council (NRC) activities. She was an elected member of the Bureau of the International Union for Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC); and has been active in the American Chemical Society throughout her career, having served as 2003 President of the Society. Elsa Reichmanis is the recipient of several awards, including the ACS Award in the Chemistry of Materials (2018), the ACS Award in Applied Polymer Science (1999), the ASM Engineering Materials Achievement Award (1996), and the Society of Chemical Industry’s Perkin Medal (2001). In other service, she is an Executive Editor of the ACS Journal Chemistry of Materials. 

The Reichmanis Group works at the interface of chemical engineering, chemistry, materials science, optics, and electronics spanning the range from fundamental concept to technology development and implementation. Research interests include the chemistry, properties and applications of materials technologies for electronic and photonic applications, with particular focus on polymeric and nanostructured materials for advanced technologies. in paper-based battery applications as well. 

Josiah Hester works broadly in computer engineering, with a special focus on wearable devices, edge computing, and cyber-physical systems. His Ph.D. work focused on energy harvesting and battery-free devices that failed intermittentently. He now focuses on sustainable approaches to computing, via designing health wearables, interactive devices, and large-scale sensing for conservation. 
   
His work in health is focused on increasing accessibility and lowering the burden of getting preventive and acute healthcare. In both situations, he designs low-burden, high-fidelity wearable devices that monitor aspects of physiology and behavior, and use machine learning techniques to suggest or deliver adaptive and in-situ interventions ranging from pharmacological to behavioral. 
   
His work is supported by multiple grants from the NSF, NIH, and DARPA. He was named a Sloan Fellow in Computer Science and won his NSF CAREER in 2022. He was named one of Popular Science's Brilliant Ten, won the American Indian Science and Engineering Society Most Promising Scientist/Engineer Award, and the 3M Non-tenured Faculty Award in 2021. His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, BBC, Popular Science, Communications of the ACM, and the Guinness Book of World Records, among many others.

David Flaherty, PhD is a Professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech since June 2023 (starting Summer 2023, previously at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign). His research focuses on developing the science and application of catalysis in the pursuit of sustainability. In recent years, his group’s contributions have been featured in Science, Nature Catalysis, Journal of the American Chemical Society, ACS Catalysis, Journal of Catalysis and other prestigious journals. Dr. Flaherty has received several recognitions for excellence and innovation in catalysis including the Eastman Foundation Distinguished Lecturer in Catalysis, Department of Energy Early Career Award, and the National Science Foundation CAREER Award. Dr. Flaherty engages frequently with industry to translate the groups scientific achievements from the lab into practice. Through university-industry partnerships, the group has filed multiple patents disclosing synthesis of catalytic materials and development of processes. Beyond his research activities, Dr. Flaherty enjoys teaching topics in chemical engineering in the classroom (kinetics, separations, transport, reaction engineering) and mentoring the next generation of research leaders and educators.

Prof. Flaherty received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin under the direction of Prof. C. Buddie Mullins. He conducted postdoctoral work at the University of California, Berkeley with Prof. Enrique Iglesia.