ORISE Symposium 2026

Ioannis Vasileios Chremos, Ph.D., is Program Manager for Professional Development in the University of Michigan Medical School Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies, where he supports biomedical/life sciences and biomedical engineering graduate students (MS, PhD) and postdoctoral fellows through programming and individualized advising. He coleads the Biotech Career Development Program in collaboration with Rackham Graduate School and has developed workshops and resources on generative AI in job search, science writing and professional communication, career readiness, and professional development. He holds a B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Glasgow, UK, and a Ph.D. in Engineering from the University of Delaware and is a coauthor of the Inside Higher Ed article, "A Framework for Generative AI in Graduate Professional Development."

Kristen Ellis currently serves as the Associate Principal Deputy Under Secretary for the Office of the Under Secretary for Science at the U.S. Department of Energy. This office leads the Genesis Mission on behalf of the Federal government; a majority of DOE’s research portfolio; direct management of 10 of the Department’s national labs and multiple user facilities; and technology commercialization activities.

Most recently, she served as Associate Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Regulatory and Policy Affairs within the U.S. Department of Energy’s Environmental Management (EM) Office with a portfolio that included infrastructure disposition, subsurface closure, regulatory compliance, waste and materials management and packaging and transportation.

Previously, she was the Director for Regulatory, Intergovernmental, and Stakeholder Engagement within EM, leading regulatory relationships, stakeholder and intergovernmental engagement. She has previously served as EM’s Senior Advisor for STEM and Talent Acquisition, assessing future STEM workforce needs. She led the DOE Office of Public affairs during a presidential transition.

As previous Chief of Staff for DOE Under Secretary for Science, she oversaw personnel, budgets, policy, media, and management of over $14 billion in Federal funding.

She has held leadership roles in the EM Office of External Affairs, the EM Intergovernmental Office and DOE's Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs.

She received her Juris Doctorate from the University of Baltimore School of Law and is licensed to practice in Maryland. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from Western Maryland College, with concentrations in Communications and Journalism.

Dr. Sadovnik is a Senior Research Scientist and the Research Lead for the Center for AI Security Research (CAISER) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. As part of this role, Dr. Sadovnik leads multiple programs for various defense sponsors related to AI risk, adversarial AI, and large language model vulnerabilities. Prior to joining the lab he received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cornell University and served as an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee. 

Seyed Kahaki is a Senior Staff Fellow and Regulatory Research Scientist at the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH). With expertise in medical artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning evaluation, and digital pathology, he conducts research and supports the regulatory review of medical devices. He previously held Research Fellow positions at Harvard Medical School and Northeastern University.

Dr. Sharon L. Stephenson serves as the Physics Research Division Director for the DOE-SC Office of High Energy and Nuclear Physics. Her division supports experimental and theoretical research to create, detect, and describe the different forms and complexities of nuclear matter that can exist in the universe, including those no longer naturally found, and to explore the basic nature of space and time. Prior joining the DOE, Dr. Stephenson was the W. K. T. Sahm Professor of Physics at Gettysburg College where she received both the Johnson Center for Creative Teaching and Learning Excellence in Teaching Award and the Luther W. and Bernice L. Thompson Distinguished Teaching Award. Dr. Stephenson received a Ph.D. in physics from North Carolina State University for research performed at Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Los Alamos Neutron Science Center and a B.S. in physics from Millsaps College. Dr. Stephenson has co-authored over seventy publications in fundamental symmetries and nuclear structure physics. 

Brian Stucky is a computational biologist with the SCINet Office at the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS). He is also currently serving as the Acting Chief Scientific Information Officer for ARS. Brian’s professional background includes training in biology, ecology, and computer science. Brian has broad experience in scientific research and computing and he enjoys supporting ARS’s research mission by facilitating the application of advanced computational methods to agricultural science.

Dr. Elizabeth J. Altman is an associate professor of management (with tenure) at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, Manning School of Business. She is a research affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Initiative on the Digital Economy and a nonresident fellow in the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution. Dr. Altman has been a visiting scholar at Harvard Business School and a visiting professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. 

Her research focuses on strategy, innovation, platforms, ecosystems, artificial intelligence (AI), leadership, sustainability-driven innovation, and the future of work. She is lead author of the award-winning book, “Workforce Ecosystems: Reaching Strategic Goals with People, Partners, and Technologies” (MIT Press, 2023). 

Her work has been published by Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, the Brookings Institution, Academy of Management Annals, Journal of Management Studies, and other leading outlets. Before entering academia, Dr. Altman spent 18 years in industry and served for nine years as a vice president at Motorola. She holds a doctorate in business administration from Harvard Business School, master’s degrees in mechanical engineering and management from MIT, and a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell University.

Dick Co is a scientist, educator, and startup founder who believes in the power of entrepreneurship to improve lives and unlock the human and technological potential needed for a more prosperous planet.

As Director of Chain Reaction Innovations, Dick works with the CRI team and stakeholders to create and implement programming and vision that continually deepen and grow CRI’s impact. With a track record of forming successful strategic alliances across diverse ideas and partners, Dick is passionate about applying his analogical thinking to help others thrive in the complex worlds of hard tech.

Immediately prior to his role at CRI, Dick advised tech startups in catalysis, the built environment, and synthetic biology. While a faculty member at Northwestern University, he published regularly in peer-reviewed journals covering topics from early-stage commercialization strategies to ultrafast photochemistry.

Dick is an Executive Scholar at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and he holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Physics and A.M. in Chemistry and Chemical Biology from Harvard University, and a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley.

Ozlem Kilic is the Vice Provost and Founding Dean of the College of Emerging and Collaborative Studies (CECS) at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Prior to joining the Provost’s office, Kilic served as the Associate Dean of Academic and Student Affairs at UTK’s Tickle College of Engineering. As part of her associate dean responsibilities, she also co-supervised the Heath Integrated Business and Engineering program in partnership with UTK’s Haslam College of Business. She has led multiple initiatives designed to enhance student recruitment and retention, such as the establishment of Student Success and Women in Engineering offices in engineering.

She led the administrative operations across all colleges for the launch of the intercollegiate data science minor — the first intercollegiate undergraduate program at UTK, with collaboration among the Tickle College of Engineering; College of Arts and Sciences; Haslam College of Business; College of Communication and Information; Herbert College of Agriculture; College of Education, Health and Human Sciences; College of Architecture and Design; College of Nursing; and the College of Social Work — and served as its executive director until the program transferred to CECS. It is this work that led to the discussions on how to improve intercollegiate education on campus ultimately leading to the launch of CECS.

Prior to coming UTK, Kilic served in various leadership roles such as the department chair of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and as the associate dean of engineering at the Catholic University of America. She has also worked as an electronics engineer at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory where she managed Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Programs, and as a program manager at Lockheed Martin Global Telecommunications.

Dr. James Dewar is an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, where he joined the faculty in 2016 following postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School. His laboratory uses Xenopus egg extracts to study vertebrate DNA replication termination, characterizing the mechanisms by which the replication machinery resolves the final stages of DNA synthesis to maintain genomic stability. Recently, Dr. Dewar has focused on integrating artificial intelligence into science and research, and is one of the first practitioners of agentic bioinformatics (Conwell et al., Nat Struct Mol Biol, 2026). He serves as Director of AI Initiatives for the biomedical graduate programs at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, where he developed and taught an AI training module for biomedical scientists. He maintains an open-access preprint on using AI for science and research (Dewar, Zenodo, 2026; a top-100 preprint of approximately 156,000), and has developed a pedagogical framework designed to make educational programs AI-ready (Dewar & Venkatesh, EdArXiv, 2026).

Matt Sigelman is President of the Burning Glass Institute, a nonprofit data laboratory working at the intersection of the future of work and the future of learning to advance economic mobility, opportunity, and improved outcomes for workers and learners. Previously Chairman and CEO of Lightcast, Matt pioneered the field of real-time labor market analytics. He serves as Senior Advisor at the Harvard Project on the Workforce and a Futures Fellow at the Stanford Center on Longevity. Named by Forbes to its Future of Work 50, he holds an AB from Princeton University, an MBA from Harvard, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.