As an innovation advisor with RTI Innovation Advisors, a business unit of RTI International, Alison Sykes assesses technologies for commercial potential, performs market research, and creates commercialization strategies for high-potential technologies. She has experience in technology areas, including antimicrobials/pesticides, controlled-release technologies, new and emerging coatings and materials. She is an expert in organometallic chemistry from her work as a research associate while completing her PhD in inorganic chemistry and water disinfection.
Before joining RTI Innovation Advisors in 2015, Dr. Sykes worked in the Department of Environmental Science and Engineering at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill for Dr. Howard Weinberg. Her project work was centered around the identification and quantification of oxidants present in the electrolytic solution that are formed during the electrolysis of brine. This solution is used as an alternative to chlorine in the disinfection of drinking water. Dr. Sykes also worked on the analysis of disinfecting by-products formed during the chlorination drinking water.