Dr. Bindu Nair
Associate Director, Basic Energy Sciences
Office of Basic Energy Sciences
SC-32/Germantown Building
U.S. Department of Energy
1000 Independence Avenue, SW
Washington, D.C. 20585-1290
Email:[email protected]
Phone: (301) 903-3081
Dr. Bindu R. Nair is the Associate Director of Science for Basic Energy Sciences. In this role, she oversees the Department’s investment in the fundamental research to understand, predict, and ultimately control matter at the electronic, atomic, and molecular levels. She is also responsible for the planning, construction, and operation of major scientific user facilities that serve researchers across the wide variety of fields supported by Basic Energy Sciences (BES).
Prior to her appointment at the Department of Energy, Dr. Nair spent much of her career at the Department of Defense where she most recently served as the Director of Basic Research in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. In this role, Dr. Nair was responsible for overseeing a $2.75 billion portfolio in fundamental re-search spanning physics, material sciences, chemistry, biology, engineering, computer science, mathematics, environmental science, aerospace science, and more. In addition to growing the DoD’s basic research portfolio, she also took policy leadership for the Department in a variety of issues including fundamental research policy, research security, interagency fundamental research coordination, and STEM programming. She served and led multiple interagency working groups on these topics.
Earlier in her career, she served in other roles overseeing science and technology investments within the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army in environmental technologies, bio-assist technologies, human machine teaming, social behavioral modeling, and power/energy sciences.
She has worked in the Department of Defense laboratory system at the Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center (Natick, MA) as well as in private industry at Foster Miller (Waltham, MA).
Her research expertise is in the field of Material Science and Engineering including nanomaterials, polymers, and organic electronic materials, and she has taught graduate level courses in Polymer Synthesis. She has published primarily in membrane and materials development fields and holds patents in fuel cell technologies. Dr. Nair holds a B.Sc. from the University of Florida and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Materials Science and Engineering.
