Our Experts
Marco Castaldi
Marco Castaldi has a PhD in Chemical Engineering from UCLA with minors in Astrophysics and Advanced Theoretical Physics. He has collaborated with researchers from Lawrence Livermore, Sandia, Brookhaven and Argonne National Laboratories on wide ranging research from combustion modeling to catalytic reactor development to hydrate dissociation studies. He has seven patents and two pending applications in the areas of catalysis and combustion. Marco has authored over 100 peer reviewed publications. He worked in the industry for 10 years after his PhD, then at Columbia’s Earth & Environmental Engineering Department prior to his arrival at City College in the Fall 2012. He has received the SEAS Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award, is a Fellow of The National Academy of Engineering, Frontiers of Engineering Education, a Fulbright Global Fellow and Technical Fellow of ASME and AIChE.
Rachel A. Meidl
Dr. Rachel A. Meidl, Ph.D., CHMM, is a deputy director and distinguished fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, Center for Energy Studies, and serves as a strategic advisor on circular economy for MSCI, Inc. Her research focuses on sustainability, circular economy, life cycle management, and understanding the environmental, economic, and social impacts across energy supply chains. Dr. Meidl was previously appointed Deputy Associate Administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration in Washington, D.C. Prior to her service in government, she was Director of Regulatory & Technical Affairs at the American Chemistry Council. She has 28 years of experience in industry, academia, government, finance, and international relations. Dr. Meidl is a Certified Hazardous Materials Manager, received a B.S. in conservation biology and zoology & animal physiology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, a M.S. in environmental policy and management, a M.Ed. in applied science and technology with certifications in chemistry and physics, and a Ph.D. in law and public policy from Northeastern University. She is a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Roundtable on Plastics Committee.
Steve Goff
Stephen Goff is the owner of SpG Consulting, which provides technical consulting services to the waste-to-energy and waste management industries. Mr. Goff established his consulting business after a 35-year career in the waste-to-energy industry. Throughout his career he was an industry leader in new technology development, strategic technical planning, technology risk assessment and process optimization, having led these functions at Covanta (now Reworld), the world’s largest owner/operator of waste-to-energy facilities. Mr. Goff specializes in the evaluation and development of new technologies for the recovery of value from municipal solid waste and components of the waste stream, such as plastics and organics. His expertise covers a wide range of technologies including combustion, gasification, pyrolysis, autoclaving, anaerobic digestion, emissions control and beneficial reuse of process residues. He also has extensive experience in the process analysis and optimization of chemical processes and energy systems.
Massimiliano Delferro
Massimiliano "Max" Delferro is a senior chemist and group leader of the Catalysis Science Program in the Chemical Sciences and Engineering Division at Argonne National Laboratory and senior scientist in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. He obtained is PhD from the University of Parma working under the supervision of Prof. Daniele Cauzzi. After a postdoc with Prof. Tobin Marks at Northwestern University, he became a Research Professor at Northwestern University. In 2016, he joined Argonne where he currently works on the chemical recycling of plastics and the development of supported organometallic catalysis for C-H and C-C transformation. He is the Deputy Director of the “Institute for Cooperative Upcycling of Plastics” (iCOUP), an Energy Frontier Research Centers funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. He is also the Argonne initiative leader for “Science for a Circular Economy”. He published more than 150 publications and hold more than 30 patents. He is a member of the editorial board of ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces and member of several prestigious organizations, including the American Chemical Society and the Catalysis Society. He is also a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Kevin Van Geem
Kevin Van Geem is a member of the Laboratory for Chemical Technology of Ghent University. Thermochemical reaction engineering in general and in particular the transition from fossil to renewable resources are his main research interests. He is a former Fulbright Research Scholar of MIT and directs the Pilot plant for steam cracking and pyrolysis. He is the author of more than three hundred scientific publications and has recently started his own spin-off company. He holds three ERC grants, a consolidator, an advanced grant and a proof of concept grant. He is involved in on-line and off-line analysis of complex petrochemical and biochemical samples using comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography. Chemical recycling, detailed kinetic modeling, process, scale-up, and anti-fouling technology belong to his main expertise.
Gregg Beckham
Gregg T. Beckham is a Senior Research Fellow and Group Leader at NREL. He received his PhD in Chemical Engineering at MIT in 2007. He currently leads and works with an interdisciplinary team at NREL on the development of sustainable processes and products in the areas of biomass conversion and plastics recycling. He also is the CEO of the US Department of Energy-funded BOTTLE Consortium, which focuses on plastics recycling and redesign.
Christoph Koffler
Chris Koffler is the Technical Director for the Americas of Sphera’s Sustainability Consulting practice. In this role he is responsible for the quality of all sustainability consulting projects across the region, methodological development, and project oversight. In addition, he is the primary lead in selected areas such as the automotive sector. Chris is a firm believer in the importance of high quality and accurate data to inform product design and strategy development towards a more sustainable future. Over the last 20+ years, Chris has worked on literally hundreds of Life Cycle Assessment and Carbon Footprint projects across a wide variety of industry sectors, including but not limited to the automotive, metals & mining, building & construction, chemical, electronics, consumer goods, packaging, textile, and financial sectors, either in a project manager, quality assurance manager, or independent reviewer role. Chris received his Doctorate in Engineering from the Darmstadt University of Technology in 2007. His PhD work was on Automotive Product Life Cycle Assessment and was carried out at the Volkswagen Group Research Department in Wolfsburg, Germany. He came to the United States in 2010 for his current position at Sphera (formerly thinkstep, formerly PE Americas). Chris has published numerous papers in the field of Life Cycle Assessment and frequently provides his expertise in peer and critical reviews. Chris is a board member at the American Center for Life Cycle Assessment (ACLCA) and is the current co-chair of its Technical Committee. He has represented the U.S. and SETAC North America in the development of various LCA-related ISO standard and has taught Product Life Cycle Assessment at Yale’s School of the Environment and the Harvard Extension School. In 2023, Chris was awarded the Rita Schenck Lifetime Individual LCA Leadership Award by ACLCA, making him the youngest awardee to date.