Expertise

Senior Research Fellow, BOTTLE Consortium, National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Bob Allen joined NREL (the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO) and the BOTTLE Consortium in 2020 as a Senior Research Fellow and is focused on plastics deconstruction, upcycling of waste plastics and application-specific recycle-by-design materials innovation. Prior to joining NREL, he worked at IBM Research for 35 years, most recently as a Distinguished Researcher and Senior Manager in charge of the Polymer Science & Technology department at the Almaden Research Center in San Jose, CA. His significant technical accomplishments include the invention and development of the VolCat PET recycling process and the design, development, and commercialization of multiple generations of 193nm photoresists used globally in the manufacture of semiconductors. He’s a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the SPIE for his contributions to polymers enabling modern semiconductor lithography technology. He is currently an adjunct Professor of Practice at Arizona State University.