ANDREW MESECAR is the director of the Purdue Institute for Cancer Research, assistant vice president for research, the Walther Professor of Cancer Structural Biology, and a professor in the departments of biochemistry and biological sciences.

Mesecar is a leader in basic research on the structure and function of enzymes involved in disease. He uses structure-based design approaches to target these enzymes with drugs. Mesecar studied the X-ray structures of coronavirus proteases, which was instrumental to developing drugs during the COVID-19 pandemic and the previous SARS epidemic.

Mesecar has more than 150 publications and has given more than 100 invited talks, and he has a record of continual funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He has received several fellowships and honors, and he has three awarded patents and six provisional patents.

Mesecar was chair of the executive committee for the instrument development team for a macromolecular neutron diffractometer at the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where he secured funding to build a world-renowned neutron diffractometer for macromolecular neutron structures. Mesecar was an associate editor for Crystallography Reviews. He has also served on many NIH grant panels and site visit review teams for NIH’s National Cancer Institute proposals.

Mesecar previously held positions at the University of Illinois Chicago; the University of California, Berkeley; and the University of Notre Dame.

STEPHAN BILLER is a distinguished professor in the School of Industrial Engineering and the Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. School of Business. He is passionate about how artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) can facilitate the digital transformation of large, medium, and small manufacturing enterprises.

As an industry senior executive and innovator, Biller has significantly impacted the direction of digital manufacturing and IoT. He is a founder of the Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition and has been recognized by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers as one of 30 visionaries for manufacturing. He served on the executive boards of two Manufacturing USA Institutes, including his time as chair for the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute in Chicago. He is the founder of Advanced Manufacturing International, a nonprofit that accelerates the digital transformation of small and medium manufacturers.

Biller previously served as the vice president of product management for AI applications and Watson IoT at IBM, the chief manufacturing scientist and manufacturing technology director at General Electric (GE), and a technical fellow and global group manager for manufacturing systems at General Motors. Biller founded GE’s Brilliant Factory initiative, growing it to more than 150 researchers and engineers and 500 managers and executives.

JESSICA GUREVITCH is the department head for forestry and natural resources and a renowned professor and plant ecologist. She is interested in the environment, ecology, natural resources, and forests.

Gurevitch’s work focuses on the ecological implications, risks, and potential benefits of various approaches to climate change intervention. She has made unique contributions to ecology by bringing formal scientific methods for research synthesis and meta-analysis to the evaluation of ecological data. This work has benefited from broad multidisciplinary interactions. She has also developed meta-analytic tools, which have been widely applied and have allowed researchers to use data to resolve long-standing questions and generate insights about complex ecological systems. Her contributions have led to a stronger scientific basis for the use of ecological data to resolve fundamental and applied problems from local to global scales, including implications for science-based policy.

Gurevitch has been elected to leadership positions in five scientific societies. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Ecological Society of America. Gurevitch has authored, coauthored, and coedited several influential books, including a major textbook on plant ecology and books on meta-analysis in ecology and ecological experimental design and analysis. She previously held positions at Stony Brook University, the National Science Foundation, and Macquarie University.

SANTOKH BADESHA is a prolific inventor and an adjunct professor in the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is internationally recognized for inventing foundational technologies that have impacted digital printing on demand.

Badesha developed materials enabling the broad use of laser printing and the creation of color laser printing. He is a Xerox fellow and manager of open innovation at Xerox, where he holds the record for U.S. patents with more than 267. His inventions appear in nearly every product released by Xerox in the past 25 years.

Badesha is a fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, the National Academy of Engineering, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the Society for Imaging Science and Technology. He also serves as a trustee of FuzeHub, New York’s manufacturing collaborative. Badesha was named a chartered scientist by the Science Council of the United Kingdom and is the recipient of many awards from Xerox, including his induction into the Xerox Innovation Group Hall of Fame.

Badesha previously held positions at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Xerox Webster Research Center, and Xerox Innovation Group.