Dr. W. Jud Ready is the Deputy Director, Innovation Initiatives for the Georgia Tech ‘Institute for Materials.’ He has also been an Adjunct Professor in the School of Materials Science & Engineering at Georgia Tech and a Principal Research Engineer on the research faculty of Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) for eighteen years. Prior to joining the Georgia Tech faculty, he worked for a major military contractor (General Dynamics) as well as in small business (MicroCoating Technologies). He has served as PI or co-PI for grants totaling ~$18M awarded by the Army, Navy, Air Force, DARPA, NASA, NSF, NIST, industry, charitable foundations, private citizens, and the States of Georgia and Florida. His current research focuses primarily on energy, aerospace, nanomaterial applications and electronics reliability. Dr. Ready has at least 1,486 citations from his numerous refereed publications on electronic and nanoscale materials and his research developments have been presented at well-over two dozen international conferences, including invited talks in Prague, Hong Kong, Berlin, Tokyo, Uzbekistan, Austria and Chile. He has served as an expert witness in criminal and civil cases and he has provided testimony to the Georgia State House Science & Technology Committee. He has fourteen patents awarded in the United States (#6,846,370; 6,994,757; 8,350,146; 8,474,805; 8,604,681; 8,774,890; 8,919,752; 9,058,954; 9,427,091; 9,859,477; 9,892,863; 10,166,085; 10,249,444 and 10,629,227), with many others pending. Dr. Ready is a helicopter and instrument-rated fixed wing pilot and served as Board Chairman for the non-profit /501(c)(3) Yellow Jacket Flying Club, Inc. from 2010 to 2017. He has also served on the Faculty Assembly and the Georgia Tech Executive Board, as well as Trustee for the Georgia Tech Athletic Association and the Georgia Tech Alumni Association.