2025 Innovation Award Mentor – Dr. Bill Lear

Dr. William E. Lear holds a PH.D. from Stanford University and is an Associate Professor Emeritus of the University of Florida in the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering. His teaching interests include the fundamental thermal sciences.

Dr. Lear is an Associate Fellow of AIAA. Among his many honors, he is a recipient of the 2014 Energy Systems Award from AIAA, the former Chair of the Terrestrial Energy Systems technical committee, and has served in multiple roles with the International Energy Conversation Engineering Conference, including Technical Program Chair.

His areas of research are novel distributed generation systems, advanced turbo machinery, and low temperature fuel cells. He is the co-inventor of the Power, Water Extraction, and Refrigeration system, a novel gas turbine-absorption refrigeration combined cycle, as well as several inventions in the area of direct methanol fuel cells.