6. Automotive

Kate Beers is Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Material Measurement Laboratory and creator of the NIST Circular Economy program. The program includes elements of future data challenges, interfacing economics and other social sciences with materials research and manufacturing, and going beyond plastics challenges to critical minerals, and other inorganic materials. The primary CE pillars are materials design, data/decision tools, and environmental assessment methods. She currently serves on multiple interagency working groups related to sustainable chemistry, including serving as a government expert on the US delegation to the United Nations Environment Programme to negotiate a legally binding instrument to end plastic pollution. Her research has included combinatorial and high throughput polymer synthesis, microfluidic flow reactors, copolymerization kinetics, surface-grafted polymers, sustainable/renewable polymers, precision polyolefins and densely grafted ‘bottlebrush’ polymers and networks. She has been recognized with the President’s Early Career Award in Science and Engineering (PECASE), the Arthur S. Flemming Award for public service, the CMU Alumni Achievement Award and as a Fellow of the American Chemical Society. She is a former Chair of the ACS Polymer Chemistry Division and the Green Chemistry Institute’s Advisory Board and spent a year in science policy as the Assistant Director for Physical Sciences and Engineering in the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in the Executive Office of the President.