Workshop speaker

Ellie Fini

Co-Founder, Bio-Adhesive Alliance Inc.

Elham (Ellie) Fini is Co-founder of Bio-Adhesive Alliance Inc., and director of the sustainable infrastructure materials lab, Associate Professor, J. W. Fulbright Scholar at North Carolina A&T State University. She received her Ph.D. at the the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2008 on characterizing interfacial properties of adhesives and sealants.

She has been a research affiliate at MIT’s Center for Materials Science and Engineering since 2011, and is currently serving as the associate editor of ASCE Journal of Materials as well as the inventor and co-founder of a start-up company, Bio-Adhesive Alliance Inc. She has been collaborating with multiple professional and scientific societies, federal agencies, and congressional offices, mainly as an academician. She has been an invited speaker at Kavli Frontiers of Science at the National Academy of Science; she also served as a program director for the National Science Foundation. She has been actively fostering the culture of innovation and entrepreneurship within her campus and science community.

Her achievements were recognized via multiple awards including NSF CAREER award, 2017 BEYA STEM Innovation award, and nomination for 2017 BioNight Entrepreneurial Excellence Award. One of her recently patented inventions is a unique process to break down pig manure and convert it into an asphalt-binding adhesive. The innovative bio-adhesive can be used as either a full or partial substitute to standard petroleum-based adhesives.