Alexis McKittrick, Ph.D.

Dr. Alexis McKittrick is a Program Manager with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Geothermal Technologies Office overseeing both the Low Temperature & Coproduced Resources and Hydrothermal Resources research portfolios. In this role, she leads a team that supports research, development, and demonstrations across a range of geothermal technology platforms, including district heating and cooling systems, ground-source heat pumps / geothermal heat pumps, thermal energy storage, hydrothermal power production, advanced drilling technologies, enhanced characterization of geothermal resources, and extraction of critical minerals from geothermal fluids.

Prior to joining DOE in 2020, Dr. McKittrick was a senior researcher at the IDA Science & Technology Policy Institute, a Federal Funded R&D Center where she worked with the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy and various agencies across the executive branch on a wide variety of science and technology research initiatives. In this role, she led the development of a 5-year research roadmap for DOE’s Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy (FORGE). Dr. McKittrick also has prior experience in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Climate Change Division, where she focused on greenhouse gas emissions analysis and policy recommendations for the oil and gas, semiconductor, chemicals, and materials industries. The first few years of her career were spent in industry R&D with Praxair Inc (now Linde LLC), where she held several roles focused on developing new technologies that reduced environmental emissions and increased energy efficiency for some of the U.S.’ most emissions-intensive industries. Dr. McKittrick has a B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology. She lives in the Washington, D.C. area with her partner and two daughters.