Dr. Ashok Saxena has served as the President of WireTough Cylinders, LLC since January 1, 2018. Prior to that he served as a consultant for WireTough since its inception in 2011. He also served as the Co-Principle Investigator of a recently concluded US Department of Energy Grant to WireTough (2014-2018) with a budget of $2.5M and currently serves as the Principle Investigator of a Tobacco Commission Grant from the Commonwealth of Virginia with a budget of $2M. Both these projects are aimed at developing technologies for Type II-S cylinders for storing gases at high pressures including hydrogen. Dr. Saxena is also a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Arkansas (50% time) where in the past he has served as the Provost and Vice-Chancellor of Academic Affairs, the Dean of Engineering and the Raymond and Irma Giffels’ Chair, and the Billingsley Endowed Chair. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia. Dr. Saxena previously held the position of Regents’ Professor and Chair of the School of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and was a Fellow Scientist at the Westinghouse Research and Development Center in Pittsburgh. Dr. Saxena received his MS and PhD degrees from University of Cincinnati in 1972 and 1974, respectively in Materials Science and Metallurgical Engineering and his B. Tech degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 1970 in Mechanical Engineering. Dr. Saxena’s area of expertise is mechanical behavior of materials focusing on linear and nonlinear fracture mechanics and fracture in materials at high temperatures under creep and creep-fatigue conditions. He has published over 250 research papers, authored/edited 10 books. He is the recipient of numerous awards and recognitions in the field of fracture research that include the George Irwin Medal (1992) and Fracture Mechanics Medal (2011) from ASTM, the ASTM Award of Merit and Fellow (1994), Fellow of ASM International (1996), Fellow of International Congress on Fracture (2009), Founding Fellow and former President of the Indian Structural Integrity Society (2018), and the Georgia Tech Outstanding Research Author Award (1993). He is a recipient of the Wohler Fatigue Medal from the European Structural Integrity Society (2010) and is an elected Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences (2016) and the recipient of the Paul C. Paris Gold Medal from International Congress on Fracture (2017).