Meeting Chairs

Robert Blum is the Senior Director of Marketing and New Business for Intel’s Silicon Photonics Product Division. Prior to joining Intel, Blum was Director of Strategic Marketing at Oclaro Inc., and held various director of product management and marketing roles for Oclaro’s telecommunications products and consumer laser portfolio. Before joining Oclaro, he was a product line manager for optical transmission components at JDS Uniphase Corporation and held various engineering and marketing management roles at Gemfire Corporation, all in California. Blum worked at Deutsche Telekom’s research labs in Darmstadt, Germany, while completing his master’s thesis and holds a doctorate degree in physics from the University of Technology in Hamburg. He has also studied and done research at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland, and at Stanford University in California.

Tae-Woo Lee is a professor in the department of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) at Seoul National University, Korea. His research focuses on printed or flexible electronics using organic, organic-inorganic hybrid perovkite materials, and carbon materials for applications in displays, solid-state lighting, solar energy conversion devices, and bio-inspired neuromorphic devices. He received his PhD degree in chemical engineering from KAIST in 2002, then joined Bell Laboratories as a postdoctoral researcher and worked at Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology as a member of research staff until 2008. He was an associate professor in MSE at Pohang University of Science and Technology until August 2016. He was elected as an MRS fellow in 2020. He received the 2006 Merk Award, 2008 Korea Young Scientist Award from the President of Korea, 2013 Scientist of the Month Award of Korea, 2018 Research Innovation Award of Korea and 2019 National R&D Achievement Award 'Presidential Citation' of Korea. He is author and co-author of >250 papers in prestigious journals including Science, Nature Photonics, Science Advances, Nature Communications, PNAS, Energy and Environmental Science, Joule and Advanced Materials. He is also the inventor or co-inventor of over 410 patented technologies (>190 Korean patents and >220 international patents) of which 10 patents are licensed. He is the founder of a start-up company and has delivered over 200 invited/keynote/plenary talks worldwide. He currently serves as an international editorial board member for Advanced Materials, EcoMat, FlatChem, and Semiconductor Science and Technology and as an associate editor of Organic Electronics.

Sierin Lim is an associate professor of bioengineering at the School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). She is currently serving as the associate dean (Global Partnerships) at the NTU Graduate College and the co-deputy executive director of the NTU Institute for Health Technologies. Her Bioengineered and Applied Nanomaterials Laboratory (BeANs Lab) and Molecular & Cellular Bioengineering Laboratory (MCBe Lab) focus on the design and engineering of hybrid nano/microscale devices from biological parts for applications in health, cosmetics, food and the environment. Lim earned a BS degree in chemical engineering and PhD degree in biomedical engineering from University of California, Los Angeles. She founded the Biomedical Engineering Society (Singapore) student chapter in 2009, Women@NTU in 2018, and Society of Women Engineers Singapore in 2021, of which she is the vice president (academic). In 2013 she received the L'Oréal-UNESCO Singapore for Women in Science National Fellowships, and in 2020, the Inaugural Singapore 100 Women in Tech List. She is a STEM Ambassador for Girls2Pioneers of the United Women Singapore.

Katharine Page is an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, holding a joint faculty appointment with the Neutron Scattering Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. She works at the intersection of functional energy materials research and the advancement of x-ray and neutron scattering methods. This includes ventures to understand and control local to long-range ordering in ferroelectric ceramics, energy conversion materials, and nanoscale catalysts, among other topics. She received her PhD degree in 2008 from the Materials Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Katharine was a director's postdoctoral fellow and an instrument scientist at the Lujan Neutron Scattering Center at Los Alamos National Laboratory through 2014, and then an instrument scientist within the Diffraction Group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory until 2019. She has published more than 130 peer-reviewed journal articles, delivered over 40 invited talks, and organized dozens of workshops, schools and tutorial sessions for the scientific community on advanced scattering techniques. She is a 2015 recipient of the Department of Energy (DOE) Early Career Award and a co-Principal Investigator in the UNCAGE-ME Energy Frontier Research Center. She received an Exceptional Service Award from the Neutron Scattering Society of America in 2018 and she is a 2019 recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).

Ashley White is the head of strategic development and communications for Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Energy Sciences Area and the Director of Communications for Advanced Light Source, a DOE Office of Science synchrotron light source user facility at Berkeley Lab. In these roles, she draws on her background as a materials researcher and science policy advisor to inform science strategy and convey key accomplishments to current and potential facility users and the science research community, federal funders and policymakers, and the general public. Prior to joining Berkeley Lab, she served as an MRS/OSA Congressional Science & Engineering Fellow working in the office of U.S. Senator Al Franken and in the National Science Foundation’s Division of Materials Research as an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow. She also previously managed the materials research program at the U.S. Green Building Council. She received a PhD degree in materials science from the University of Cambridge, and a BS degree and BA degree in materials science and engineering and music, respectively, from Virginia Tech. She is a past recipient of the MRS Woody White Service Award. In addition to serving as an MRS Meeting Chair, White’s MRS volunteer activities include chairing the Focus on Sustainability subcommittee and the MRS Congressional Fellowship selection committee and serving on the editorial advisory board of MRS Energy & Sustainability.