Ceramatec Board of Advisors

Robert "Bob" Bennett formed The Bennett Consulting Group and currently resides as the Chairman. The Bennett Consulting Group is a full service Washington, D.C.-based business and government relations consulting firm. The firm's mission is to facilitate interaction and optimize outcomes in the ongoing work of business and government. He is also the Chairman of the TechAmerica Foundation, which harnesses technology and innovation for growth and productivity.

Mr. Bennett is a former United States Senator from Utah and he served as a United States Senator for eighteen years. He served as a senior member of the Senate Banking Committee and as a member of the distinguished Joint Economic Committee, where he was at the center of national economic policy discussions. He also served as the ranking Republican on the Senate Rules Committee.

Mr. Bennett was a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, where he worked to balance fiscal discipline in government with the needs of maintaining a vital national economy. He understands government spending and is intimately familiar with the process that makes it happen. In addition, Mr. Bennett held chairmanships and senior positions on a number of other key Senate committees, including the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Rules and Administration Committee, and Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.

Mr. Bennett is also a part-time teacher, researcher and lecturer at the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics and a fellow at the George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs.

Dr. Uma Chowdhry is Chief Science and Technology Officer Emeritus at DuPont, a position she assumed in September 2010 after declaring her retirement. She was senior vice president and chief science and technology officer at DuPont from 2006-2010.

Dr. Chowdhry joined DuPont in 1977 as a Research Scientist in the Central Research and Development (CR&D) department at the DuPont Experimental Station in Wilmington, Delaware. She spent the first 11 years of her career in CR&D in several research and management roles.

In 1999, she was appointed Director of DuPont Engineering Technology and in 2002 was appointed Vice President, CR&D. In June 2006 Dr. Chowdhry was appointed Chief Science and Technology Officer, a position that made her responsible for all the company's market-driven science and technology-based innovations and one that earned her the distinction of becoming the first woman to be appointed Chief Science and Technology Officer at a Dow 30 company.

In 1996, Chowdhry was elected as a member of National Academy of Engineering. She received a B.S. in physics from the Indian Institute of Science, Mumbai University, an M.S. in engineering science from Caltech, and a Ph.D. in materials science from MIT.

Dr. Chowdhry has served on numerous advisory boards of Universities ranging from MIT and Princeton to the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Delaware. She has served on several Federal Government advisory boards and committees of the National Academies and the Department of Energy. Dr. Chowdhry is also a member of the Delaware Science and Technology council, and a Board Bember of the Delaware Art Museum. In 2010 she has been appointed to the Board of LORD Corporation.

Dr. Miles Drake is the Senior Vice President, Research and Development and Chief Technology Officer at Weyerhaeuser, an appointment he received in 2006. Dr. Drake presently oversees a research department devoted to growing the core businesses, supporting Weyerhaeuser's customers and creating new technical-based options for growth for the Weyerhaeuser Corporation.

Prior to joining Weyerhaeuser, Drake was with Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., where he had served as Vice President, Research and Development and Chief Technology Officer since 2001. Drake joined Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. in 1986 as a European Technology Manager based in London and held numerous other leadership positions.

Drake holds a Ph.D. from Bristol University School of Surface Chemistry and a BA in Natural Science from Cambridge University UK.

In 2004-2005 he served as Chairman of the Industrial Research Institute, an organization of 200 global companies focused on enhancing the effectiveness of technological innovation. He currently serves as a Board Member of the Board of Chemical Science & Technology of The National Academies.

Dr. Nocera is presently the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Director of the Solar Revolutions Project and Director of the Eni Solar Frontiers Center at MIT. His group pioneered studies of the basic mechanisms of energy conversion in biology and chemistry. He has recently accomplished a solar fuels process that captures many of the elements of photosynthesis outside of the leaf. This discovery sets the stage for a storage mechanism for the large scale, distributed, deployment of solar energy. In October 2010, Nocera signed with the Tata Group of India to commercialize his research.

Dr. Nocera received a B.S. degree in Chemistry (magna cum laude) from Rutgers University in 1979. He received a Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 1984, where he studied spectroscopy, electrochemistry, and photochemistry of polynuclear metal-metal bonded complexes. He joined the faculty of Michigan State University in 1984 as assistant professor, and became a professor in 1990. He moved to Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a professor of chemistry in 1997 and has since been appointed Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy, Director of the Solar Revolutions Project and Director of the Eni Solar Frontiers Center.

Dr. Nocera has been awarded the Eni Prize (2005), IAPS Award (2006), Burghausen Prize (2007), Harrison Howe Award (2008), ACS Inorganic Chemistry Award (2009) and the U.N. Intergovernmental Renewable Energy Organization's Science and Technology Award (2009) for his contributions to the development of renewable energy. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. He was named as Times Magazine 100 Most Influential People in the World.