R&D World announces 2025 R&D 100 Professional Award Winners

R&D World has announced the winners of the 2025 R&D 100 Professional Awards. The honorees were selected by a panel of 54 prestigious industry experts from around the globe.

The list of 2025 winners follows, along with highlights from their nomination letters.

These winners will be formally awarded at the R&D 100 Awards Banquet at the Marriott at McDowell Mountains in Scottsdale, AZ on November 20, 2025.

We will separately announce the R&D 100 Winners and the Special Recognition Award recipients on this website. All Finalist, Winner, and additional logos are available for download here.

Professional Awards: R&D Leader of the Year

Dr. Thomas Lograsso, Ph.D.

Director, Critical Materials Innovation Hub, Division of Critical Materials, Ames National Laboratory

Tom is currently the Director of the Department of Energy’s Critical Materials Innovation Hub (CMI) and the Division Director of Critical Materials at the Ames National Laboratory. Over the years, Tom has exemplified what it means to be an extraordinary leader in research and development. His visionary guidance, commitment, and passion for scientific innovation have led the CMI to the strong mission-oriented institution it is today, surpassing expectations and setting new benchmarks in the advancement of critical materials.

Under his leadership, diverse, interdisciplinary teams have transformed ambitious ideas into tangible, breakthrough solutions. Whether steering major projects or pivoting quickly in the face of unforeseen challenges, Tom’s leadership has consistently delivered exceptional scientific and technological achievements, fostering a Hub that has produced 64 issued patents, 25 licensed technologies and approximately 700 publications to date.

Beyond his impressive technical and managerial accomplishments, Tom’s approach to leadership is profoundly human. He dedicates considerable energy to mentoring emerging talent, always making time to guide his direct reports and foster a culture of growth and innovation. His proactive contributions extend well beyond his day-to-day responsibilities; Tom actively engages with the broader scientific community through volunteer efforts, knowledge-sharing seminars, and industry forums. His commitment to giving back has not only fortified the CMI’s success but also enriched the entire R&D community.

Feedback from colleagues, current and former team members, consistently highlights Tom’s integrity, foresight, and inspirational character. His blend of visionary ideation, precise execution, and compassionate mentorship creates a legacy of excellence that is both rare and indispensable in today’s fast-paced scientific landscape. The transformative impact of his work is evident in the measurable advancements and the lasting influence on those he leads. To recognize Tom’s vision and commitment, DOE awarded him with the Visionary Award in 2024.

Professional Awards: R&D Researcher of the Year

Hongyou Fan, Ph.D.

Manager, R&D Science and Engineering, Sandia National Laboratories

Dr. Fan is an internationally recognized leader in chemical science, materials science, and nanoscience and nanotechnology, whose pioneering research has significantly advanced Department of Energy (DOE) missions in science, energy, and national security.

His transformative research work has driven groundbreaking innovations, resulting in 24 patents and the founding of two companies, Lunano, LLC, and Critical Materials, LLC. Having won six R&D 100 Awards and six Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) Awards in Technology Transfer, Dr. Fan’s achievements have also been widely recognized by leading professional societies, and both state and national legislators.

These honors underscore his pivotal role in advancing the nation’s innovation ecosystem and exemplify his unwavering commitment to leveraging science and engineering not only for societal benefit but to inspire the next generation of engineers and scientists. Currently, Dr. Fan serves as Sandia’s department manager of Geochemistry, manager of the DOE Office of Basic Energy Sciences Geoscience Program and manager of the Sandia office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management Critical Minerals Program. He has led his team to invent key technology for extracting critical minerals from coal and coal ash, contributing to the establishment of a reliable, secure, and sustainable national supply chain of critical minerals, which is aligned with the current administration’s goals. He actively supports his teams in technology transfer programs such as DOE’s Energy I-Corps and DIVERSE-W. He also finds time to share his expertise at DOE events on how he co-founded Critical Materials, LLC, and Lunano, LLC.

Over the past two decades, Dr. Fan has made seminal contributions to foundations of colloid chemistry, particularly in advancing colloidal aggregation, dispersion, assembly, and synthesis through innovative interfacial processes. His contributions have transformed our understanding of nanoscale colloidal materials and provided critical insights into colloidal and interfacial phenomena, opening new avenues for integrating nanoscale colloidal systems into various applications that have significantly impacted public health, energy sustainability, and national security. His work seamlessly integrates visionary materials assembly, synthesis, and characterizations with deep explorations into the chemistry and physics of nanoscale colloidal systems, which have led to immense scientific discoveries and technological significance. For example, his research into photoactive porphyrin nanocrystals enabled the commercialization of colloidal disinfectant solutions through his co-founded company Lunano, revolutionizing cleaning and disinfection in both homes and public spaces. This achievement earned him a 2024 Federal Laboratory Consortium Technology Transfer Award.

Professional Awards: R&D Team of the Year

BioXcelerate AI

Under the leadership of Chris Foley, Ph.D., CEO, who sets the strategic direction and leads the research, with the expertise of Zhana Kuncheva, Ph.D., and Soroosh Afyouni, Ph.D., Directors of Health Data Science, driving innovation and delivery.

The R&D team at BioXcelerate AI combines deep technical expertise with real-world delivery, solving high-value problems in drug discovery and precision medicine.

Chris Foley, Ph.D. (pictured), served as the team’s original lead, building the early machine-learning architecture and guiding its first collaborations with global pharmaceutical partners. A former University of Cambridge research fellow (2015–2021) and NIHR Fellow (2014), he drew on machine learning, drug discovery, and health data systems expertise to shape the platform’s early design, a foundation that still guides its use today.

Zhana helps set the scientific and strategic direction and has built a multidisciplinary group that connects academic insight with real-world application. Zhana’s experience in statistical genetics, translational genomics, and biotech consulting helps the team deliver practical, high-impact results.

Soroosh leads product development and day-to-day execution. With a background in applied statistics, neuroimaging, and healthcare consulting, he has helped turn internal R&D into a strong commercial offering. His work includes building tools for causal inference, fine-mapping, and knowledge graphs, and supporting clients in putting them to use at scale.

Daniel McCartney, Ph.D., serves as lead bioinformatician, where he drives the development of scalable analysis pipelines, integration of multi-omic and clinical datasets, and application of advanced causal inference methods to uncover disease mechanisms and risk factors. His experience in the management and analysis of population-level health datasets has helped the team build tools that uncover meaningful insights, driving biomarker discovery and genetic risk prediction.

Manju Dissanayake, Ph.D., serves as Principal of Technology Innovation. With a background in artificial intelligence, cloud infrastructure, and statistical genetics, he played a key role in building the team’s production-ready genomic analysis platform. His expertise in R, Nextflow, and platforms like AWS and GCP combines engineering precision with strategic oversight, helping translate complex science into scalable, usable tools.

Alex Southgate, Ph.D., is a Senior Bioinformatics Engineer with a background in gravitational wave physics, systems biology, and public health. They focus on infrastructure, ensuring workflows are scalable, reproducible, and production ready. Their work on containerisation, CI/CD, and cloud tools helps the team move quickly and reliably from prototype to deployment.

Lily Andrews, Ph.D., contributes as a Health Data Scientist. With expert-level knowledge on genetic causal inference methods, Lily works across projects on target validation, statistical methods development, and result interpretation, adding both depth and flexibility to the team’s work

Professional Awards: R&D Technician of the Year

Richard Tapper

Associate Research Specialist, The Dow Chemical Company
As part of a team, Richard has made valuable contributions to the making and testing of polymer compositions for wire and cable applications (in which the polymer systems form the insulation or jacket layers). Richard’s work on flame-retardant polymer systems for making highly fire-resistant insulated wires for safe and efficient delivery of power is especially noteworthy. The safe, reliable and sustainable cables made of the
products that Richard has been involved in developing are integral to a power grid that is getting more complex, larger and increasingly drawing from remote sources of wind and solar power as the world electrifies, digitalizes and decarbonizes. The total addressable global market is greater than $1 billion annually (with growth rates as high as 10% in some segments).

Richard’s expertise in fundamental analysis and application of Fire Testing has contributed to the development of commercial flame-retardant products (and continues to be valued for ongoing projects). These filled polymer systems deliver the most demanding burn performance ratings of insulated wires (to safeguard against fires resulting from electrical faults) and account for millions of dollars in annual revenue for Dow. Both halogenated and halogen-free flame-retardant systems have been (or are being) developed with Richard’s involvement. Part of the focus of Richard’s work has been towards the development of polymeric systems based on halogen-free or halogenated flame-retardants that are not classified or viewed as persistent, bio-accumulative and toxic. In this context, Richard has had to put in place specialized wire extrusion capabilities to enable making constructions that are representative of those used for varied applications, such as photovoltaic cables based on halogen-free flame retarded systems for insulation and sheathing materials that are TÜV-Certified to BS EN 50618 and IEC 62930 for use in renewable energy solar farms (with vertical flame performance measured in accordance with IEC 60332-1-2).

Richard has taken the initiative to identify specialized Fire Testing apparatus with enhanced capabilities, implement new testing capabilities (including working with vendors to have new pieces of equipment installed and commissioned), suggest improvements to established tests, generate data and analyze results to draw conclusions. He also trains co-workers on conducting Fire Tests, helps colleagues to be successful in their projects, and works jointly with his peers on important quality and safety initiatives.

Richard has received several Dow awards for his contributions and is co-inventor on 3 patent applications (aimed at protecting valuable intellectual property for Dow). He presented a paper on Wire and Cable Halogen-Free Flame-Retardant Technology at the ACS Fall 2022 Meeting in Chicago, Illinois that was well received by the audience. Furthermore, Richard has co-authored 31 reports within Dow aimed at documenting important findings from the work that he has been involved with.