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Sylvia Wower is the Vice President of Research and Strategic Growth at DVIRC, where she manages the company’s market development department, including market research, market scouting, and lead generation.

Having studied and worked in five countries around the world, Sylvia brings a global economic perspective to her market development and economic research work at DVIRC. She has more than 16 years of international experience in market development and business intelligence management. While working at DVIRC, Sylvia has successfully managed the execution of more than 500 market development consulting projects for a variety of sectors in the manufacturing industry.

Rebecca Jacobson is the public outreach coordinator for NIST Boulder. She has been a science writer and journalist for JILA, the City of Denver, and PBS. Rebecca graduated from the University of Nebraska with degrees in English and Film Studies. Outside of her job, she can be found hiking in the Rockies and brewing beer.

Claire Lamberti is a graduate student at Southern Methodist University in Tomce Runcevski’s group where she is studying polymorphs, organic glasses, and characterization methods of these systems as part of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF GRFP). She's worked in various research labs ranging from Texas A&M in their BioFORCE program to Research Experience for Undergraduate programs (REUs). She's a fan of exercising, reading, and listening to music, and she enjoys baking and running Spartan races in her downtime.

Steven W. Kirkpatrick is an Associate of Applied Research Associates, Inc. During his 22 years at ARA, he has led a range of research programs in highway and rail crashworthiness, aircraft impact (WTC and nuclear safety), and structural and material failure analyses. Prior to joining ARA, he worked at SRI International for 14 years performing research on blast and impact effects, dynamic structural stability, and crash safety.

Jason Averill is the chief of the Materials and Structural Systems Division. Mr. Averill started at NIST in the Fire Protection Engineering Division in 1997 and has devoted his technical career to making buildings safer for the public and first responders, first as a research fire protection engineer and currently overseeing technical work involving community resilience, earthquake and wind engineering, and material science.

Dereck Orr is chief of the Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) Division of NIST, which serves as an objective technical advisor and laboratory to FirstNet and the Department of Homeland Security. He has led the program in its mission to accelerate the adoption and implementation of the most critical public safety communications standards and technologies since 2002. Dereck holds a Master of Public Policy from the College of William and Mary.

Phillip is a Resource Manager in the Regional and State Partnerships Division (MEP) at the Department of Commerce’s (DOC) National Institute of Standards of Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Maryland.  MEP is nationwide network which provides assistance to US manufacturers to increase their global competitiveness.  Phillip has responsibility to assist Centers with the strategic adoption of manufacturing client focused services including innovation from the MEP program, to help them reach performance and operational goals important to NIST MEP, conduct annual reviews, and participate in panel reviews of Centers.  He is duty stationed in Cleveland, Ohio, and has a portfolio of MEP Centers from Kentucky to North Dakota that he is the primary point of contact for.  Recently, Phillip has been an active member of America Makes Technical Advisory Board, in Youngstown, OH, and a member of the business sustainability committee for the Lightweight Innovation Institute For Tomorrow (LIFT) in Detroit, MI.

Before joining NIST in 2001 Phillip worked in industrial extension for a number of years, including as Director of Outreach at Indiana Business Modernization and Technology (BMT) Corp managing the NIST MEP MOU at Indiana BMT.  Phillip also spent 6 years working at the EWI (Edison Welding Institute) in the area of welding automation and small business outreach.

Phillip received a B.Tech Degree (2:1) in Production Engineering and Management from Loughborough University of Technology, England in 1978 and a MS in Welding Engineering from The Ohio State University in 1986.  Phillip has authored papers and presented in the area of Robotic Welding for Small Manufacturers during his career in England, at The Ohio State University and at The Edison Welding Institute.

Anita Balachandra is a Resource Manager with MEP.  Her portfolio includes Hawaii, Oregon, Arizona, Kansas, Missouri and Minnesota.