Rosemarie Szostak, Ph.D., advises companies on technology, patents, innovation and disruptive technology. She has 20 plus years as a thought leader and analyst with broad technical knowledge in chemistry, materials and chemical engineering.

Dr. Szostak has worked in the academic, industrial as well as government sectors. She managed the Philip Morris USA Environmental Footprint Program, assessing corporate operational environmental sustainability needs and leading efforts to reduce the company’s environmental footprint for energy, waste management and recycling, nitrogen and phosphorous discharge, water usage for buildings and manufacturing facilities, and transportation options.

Dr. Szostak was a program manager for the Defense Sciences Office (DSO) at the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where her role was to identify and advance new technologies to enhance national security and new military capabilities. Her efforts led to revolutionary alternative energy concepts and the first to recognize and promote the value of changing the energy footprint of military operations.

While with DoD, she worked landmine issues, improvised explosive devises, chemical/biological weapons, and unexploded ordinance. Her work in depleted uranium use during the first Gulf War resulted in her testifying as a scientific expert to a Presidential Commission tasked for that topic.

She was a Professor/Principal Research Scientist at Georgia Tech and Clark Atlanta University and had an international reputation in the area of catalysis, catalytic processes and zeolites. She understands the petroleum/petrochemical field as she had also worked for Mobil Oil after finishing graduate school. She continues to be an evaluator/reviewer for EPA and NSF projects, academic and SBIR, as well as various EU Commission research initiatives.

Dr. Szostak also worked as a science and technology expert with the Army Environmental Policy Institute, where she assisted the Army Secretariat in developing policies and strategies to improve or resolve environmental policy issues that may have significant short or long-term impacts on the Army.

She was a professor in the Clark Atlanta University Department of Chemistry and a principal research scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute.

Dr. Szostak earned her doctoral degree in chemistry at U.C.L.A. and was a post-doctoral fellow at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

In 2008, she chaired the American Chemical Society Award for Team Innovations. Dr. Szostak was an AAAS Defense Policy Fellow, a Royal Norwegian Science and Technology Fellow at the University of Oslo, Norway, a United Nations Development Program Technology Consultant to India, and a visiting professor at the University of Calabria, Italy. She has won numerous academic and professional awards, holds six patents, has written four books and authored articles for a wide range of technical and scientific journals.

“The first lesson of technology innovation is that solutions are not found in the back of a textbook. Innovation is a process requiring a mix of passion, knowledge, foresight, collaboration, and plain old hard work.”