Dr. Laurent Pilon serves as a Program Director at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA‑E). His focus at ARPA-E is on building materials, superconductors, advanced manufacturing, electrical energy storage, thermal energy storage, and circularity.

Pilon joined ARPA-E from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where he is a professor in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department. Over the last 20 years, Pilon has engaged in a wide range of interdisciplinary research projects at the intersection of interfacial and transport phenomena, radiative heat transfer, and material science for the development of sustainable energy conversion, storage, and efficiency technologies.

He has co-authored 6 book chapters, 200 archival journal publications, and has also filed 7 patents. At UCLA, Pilon has advised 30 Ph.D. students, 22 M.S. students, and 5 post-doctoral scholars. He is the recipient of several prestigious awards including the CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (2005), the Bergles-Rohsenow Young Investigator Award in Heat Transfer (2008), and the Heat Transfer Memorial Award (2021) from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). Pilon received a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in Applied Physics from the Grenoble Institute of Technology, France and earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University.

Technical Focus: Building Materials, Superconductors, Advanced Manufacturing, Electrical Energy Storage, Thermal Energy Storage, Circularity