Gary Pickrell is a Professor in Materials Science and Engineering; Associate Director of the Center for Photonics Technology in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech; and the Rolls Royce Commonwealth Director and Technical Advisory Board voting member to CCAM, Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing. He has been honored as a Fellow of SPIE (2016), Senior member of IEEE (2010), Faculty Fellow (2007), Outstanding Assistant Professor (2005), and R&D 100 award (2004). He has over 200 publications, including 18 books, 4 special Journal issues, and 18 patents issued. He has chaired ~ 25 international conferences, organizing committee for ~ 40 international conferences and has been the PI on over $8 million in externally funded research and PI/coPI on over $15 million.