Catalyzing the Renaissance of American Mining to Enable the Energy Transition

Dr. Douglas Wicks currently serves as a Program Director at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). His program areas at ARPA-E are on transformative approaches for critical mineral recovery from mining and waste-to-energy technologies.

Doug received his PhD in Polymer Science and Engineering from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst followed by a career at Bayer, starting as a Senior Chemist and rising to become VP of Research for the Coatings and Colorants Division. In 2002, Doug moved to the University of Southern Mississippi Department of Polymer Science and Engineering where he pursued research topics in polymer synthesis and lead an NSF funded program on Entrepreneurship at the Interface of Medicinal and Polymer Chemistry. In 2008 he moved into the startup world driven by the CleanTech 1.0 VC investments, working in a number of biomass to fuels/chemicals and medicinal chemistry companies. His last role before joining ARPA-E in 2019 was at Imerys, a French Industrial Minerals firm, where he first was the global research head of the Calcium Carbonates Business Unit, followed by developing and leading their external innovation effort across 28 mineral platforms. Doug has 60 issued US Patents and numerous publications.