Dr. Dana Christensen

Dana C. Christensen is the Deputy Laboratory Director for Science & Technology of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory since 2010. Dr. Christensen is Vice President of the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC; the operating contractor for the Laboratory. After more than three decades of professional management within DOE National Laboratories, he has become one of the world’s leading experts on energy technology, energy materials and chemistry, and energy systems. He is a Board member of the Intelligent Transportation Systems of America and serves on the DOE’s Nuclear Energy Advisory Committee. As NREL’s Deputy Director for Science and Technology he is responsible for the science strategy, focused on positioning the Laboratory for delivering on high impact solutions to the Nation’s energy challenges and goals, with particular focus on renewable energy development and the integration of energy efficiency for buildings, industrial, and transportation sectors into the energy grids.

Dr. Christensen came to NREL from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory where he served as the Associate Laboratory Director for Energy and Engineering Sciences and was responsible for implementing the energy technology strategy for the Laboratory. Prior to his tenure at ORNL, Dr. Christensen was Deputy Associate Laboratory Director for Threat Reduction at Los Alamos National Laboratory and spent 28 years with the University of California. He started his career and spent four years at the Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratory doing water and environmental sciences research. Dr. Christensen has a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from New Mexico State University, Master of Science degrees in Chemical Engineering and Civil/Environmental Engineering from New Mexico State University, and an Executive MBA from the University of New Mexico.