ASME Pressure Vessels & Piping Conference 2026

Melanie Rickard is the Director General of the Directorate of Assessment and Analysis at the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, Canada’s nuclear regulator. She leads a team that performs safety assessments (design, engineering and safety analysis) of existing CANDU reactors and advanced nuclear/small modular reactors in Canada. Her team produces technical assessments related to licensing and compliance; plans and reacts to nuclear events and emergencies; represents the CNSC as leading experts in various nuclear safety fields and influences and contributes to the development of the regulatory framework. With 23 years at the CNSC, she has had a variety of experience in numerous facets of nuclear regulation. Melanie holds a Masters degree in Chemistry from the University of New Brunswick.

Amy Jo "AJ" McKean began in 2018 at PHMSA as a General Engineer (Inspector) in the Central Region and now serves as an Operations Supervisor in the Central Region. AJ has 27 years in the pipeline industry as an operator and consultant to the industry. She has worked for Williams, Southern Star and TransCanada (Keystone XL) in engineering/operations/project management. AJ holds a bachelor of science degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Missouri – Rolla (S&T).

Isabelle Chartier is director of research and innovation assets at the Hydro-Québec research center. She has 20 years of service within Hydro-Québec with experience in the fields of energy efficiency and R&D. For 10 years now, she has been responsible for managing research teams and a research portfolio for production, transmission and distribution assets. Holder of a Master's degree in business administration from the University of Quebec in Montreal and passionate about outdoor sports.

Ann Kosmal serves in the Office of Federal High-Performance Buildings of the U.S. General Services Administration. She safeguards assets from the observed and expected changes in climate for prudent investment, risk management, and augments life safety, public safety, health and security. She prompts design innovation and bolsters our Nation’s global competitiveness in the emerging sector of climate security which cannot be off-shored or outsourced. Ann is a co-author of the Fourth National Climate Assessment’s Built Environment chapter. She is a graduate of Harvard’s Senior Executive Fellows, a Passive House Consultant and Permaculturist.

Dr. Charles F. (Chuck) Kutscher is a Fellow and Senior Research Associate of the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute, a joint institute between the University of Colorado-Boulder and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). He spent a 40-year career at NREL, leading research in a wide range of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies and served as the Director of the Buildings and Thermal Sciences Center from 2013 until his retirement in July 2018. He is a Fellow of the American Solar Energy Society (ASES), served as the Society’s chair in 2000 and 2001, and chaired the Society’s national solar conference in 2006 and 2012. He led the 2007 ASES study, Tackling Climate Change in the U.S., a 200-page report detailing how energy efficiency and six renewable energy technologies can greatly reduce U.S. carbon emissions by 2030 and has given presentations around the world on climate change solutions. He is the lead author of the recently published third edition of the college textbook, Principles of Sustainable Energy Systems, and has served as an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder and the Colorado School of Mines. He is a registered Professional Engineer in the states of Colorado and California.

Prof. Anna Stefanopoulou, is the William Clay Ford Professor of Technology and the Director of the Energy Institute at the University of Michigan. Stefanopoulou joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering in 2000 after working at the University of California, Santa Barbara and in the automotive industry, where she developed algorithms and calibrations for highly efficient and advanced powertrains. Stefanopoulou is currently working with a multidisciplinary group to knit automotive and manufacturing expertise with battery and grid experts with the goal to realize a clean electrified transportation. She is in the fellow rank of three of the largest engineering societies (IEEE, SAE, ASME). Her innovation in powertrain control technology has been recognized by multiple awards and has been documented in a book, 21 US patents, 340 publications (8 of which have received awards) on estimation and control of internal combustion engines and electrochemical processes such as fuel cells and batteries. Stefanopoulou also has co-authored influential reports on the cost effectiveness of fuel-efficient technologies for light-duty vehicles, sponsored by the National Academies, to help inform policymakers.

Dr. Xiaobo Tan is an MSU Foundation Professor and the Richard M. Hong Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Michigan State University. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees in automatic control from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1995, 1998, respectively, and his Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Maryland in 2002. His research interests include underwater robotics, soft robotics, smart materials, and control systems. He has published about 300 papers and been awarded four US patents in these areas. Dr. Tan is a Fellow of IEEE and ASME. He was a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award (2006), MSU Teacher-Scholar Award (2010), MSU College of Engineering Withrow Distinguished Scholar Award (2018), Distinguished Alumni Award from the ECE Department at University of Maryland (2018), and multiple best paper awards. Dr. Tan is currently a Senior Editor for IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics (TMECH), and has served as an Associate Editor for Automatica, Technical Editor for TMECH, and guest editor for six journals. He has been on the organizing committees for a number of international conferences, including serving as the General Chair for the 2018 ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Conference. Dr. Tan is keen to integrate his research with educational and outreach activities, and has served as Director of an NSF-funded Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) Site program at MSU from 2009 - 2016 and Curator of a robotic fish exhibit at MSU Museum in 2016-2017.