William Tumas, PhD

Dr. William Tumas is the Associate Laboratory Director for Materials and Chemical Science and Technology at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), which carries out fundamental and applied R&D for renewable energy and energy efficiency including solar energy conversion for electricity and fuels, materials discovery and development for renewable energy technologies, nanoscience, energy storage, hydrogen production, and fuel cells. Bill is also the Director of the Center for the Next Generation of Materials Design (www.cngmd-efrc.org) Energy Frontier Research Center and led the Center for Inverse Design EFRC from 2011-2014. Prior to joining NREL in 2009, Bill held a number of leadership positions at Los Alamos National Laboratory for 17 years including the Program Director for Applied Energy Programs and group leader of inorganic chemistry. He started his career at Dupont Central Research after postdoctoral research at Caltech as an NIH and Chaim Weizmann Fellow. He received a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Stanford University as an NSF and Hertz Graduate Fellow and a B.A in Chemistry from Ithaca College. His research activities have included materials discovery, solar energy conversion, chemical hydrogen storage, catalysis, supercritical fluids and alternate reaction media, green chemistry, and waste treatment technology development and assessment. He has over 60 peer-reviewed publications, 12 patents, and has given over 125 invited presentations.