Dr. Mei Cai is currently serving as the Senior Director of Battery Electrochemistry and Analytics at Fluence, a Siemens and AES company. She was the Director of Battery Materials and Systems Research at General Motors Global Research and Development Center, where she is responsible for innovations in advanced battery technologies for future electric vehicles. Mei has 29 years of industrial R&D experience including extensive experience in novel materials processing for automotive applications. She is the author or co-author of 130+ scientific publications and holds more than 150 issued US patents. Her research has received more than 18,000 citations and has an h-index of 67 (Google Scholar).

Jason Carroll is the enterprise vice president of advanced manufacturing at Eaton Corporation, a $120B global leader in intelligent power management. Reporting to the Enterprise Chief Supply Chain/Manufacturing and Chief Technology Officers, he oversees the deployment of automation, robotics, additive manufacturing, materials science, and digital systems in Eaton’s operations and product development. Jason earned his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan. His research interests are in hierarchical fatigue mechanisms, multi-objective optimization, and generative artificial intelligence. He believes the successful companies of the 21st century will be digital organizations with connected, agentic based systems, for rapid design and product customization.

Alloy design and materials processing are the major fields of interest. Nickel-base superalloys, very high strength Maraging Steels and Magnesium alloys are subsets of this focus. Injection molding of Magnesium alloys is a speciality in the technology of materials processing.

Biomaterials and Highway Research have been additional topics of specialization.

Our work is inspired by the interface between materials science and regenerative engineering to address specific problems related to tissue development, repair, and regeneration. By developing mechanically and structurally dynamic biomaterials, microfabrication, and matrix manipulation techniques we aim to recreate complex cell-matrix interactions and model tissue morphogenesis and disease. The ultimate goal is to use these engineered systems to develop and translate more effective therapeutic treatments for diseases such as fibrotic, inflammatory, and congenital disorders. Our work currently focuses on developing engineered lung alveolar organoids, aiming to build models of acute and chronic pulmonary diseases and for personalized medicine.

Anil Sachdev joined GMR&D in 1977 after obtaining his ScD in Materials Science and Engineering from MIT and retired in 2023 as Principal Technical Fellow and Lab Group Manager.  His research interests include microstructure design, metal-matrix composites, and high-strength steels for structural applications.  His contributions are specifically related to implementing lightweight products by coupling multi-scale in-situ experiments with computational methods to understand phenomena leading to materials and processes tailored for specific component designs.  Key contributions include the role of retained austenite stability in dual-phase steels; improving formability of aluminum alloys; developing novel product designs with magnesium castings, tailoring alloys for additive manufacturing and processing lithium metal for high-energy batteries.  Sachdev has also established Global research centers including the China Science Lab in Shanghai and the GM India Science Lab in Bangalore and continues to sustain long-term collaborations with universities and research institutions worldwide.  He has been a Key Reader for Metallurgical and Materials Transactions for the past 40 years and has 125 patents and 100+ external publications related to light metal developments.  He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of The Metallurgical Society.