Academic Credentials
  • Ph.D., Chemical Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2011
  • M.S., Chemical Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2008
  • B.S., Chemical Engineering, Cornell University, 2005
Licenses & Certifications
  • Professional Engineer Chemical, California, #6642
  • Professional Engineer, Colorado, #PE.0053689
  • Professional Engineer, Illinois, #062.077144
  • Professional Engineer Chemical, Minnesota, #52321
  • Professional Engineer, Pennsylvania, #PE098186
  • OSHA 24-Hour HAZWOPER Certificate
  • 8-Hour HAZWOPER Annual Refresher
  • Certified Risk Based Inspection Professional, American Petroleum Institute, API 580
  • NACE Certified Corrosion Technician
Professional Honors
  • Harry G. Drickamer Research Fellowship, UIUC 2009-2010
  • National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship 2006-2009
  • BP Fellow, UIUC 2005-2006
Professional Affiliations
  • American Institute of Chemical Engineers
  • Materials Research Society
  • Society of Women Engineers
  • Association for Women in Science
  • Association for Materials Protection and Performance
Languages
  • French (France)

Dr. Sellers offers expertise in asset integrity, materials performance, and process reliability across a wide range of industries. Her work often focuses on the interplay between operating conditions and the performance of systems, piping, equipment, and products. Drawing on deep chemical engineering, materials science, and corrosion expertise, she consults directly with industry partners and provides technical support in litigation and arbitration matters.

Dr. Sellers specializes in process-driven failure analysis and integrity management, helping clients understand how system design, material selection, and operating conditions interact to ensure reliability and safety across complex industrial operations. As a Licensed Professional Chemical Engineer, Chartered Chemical Engineer, and NACE Certified Corrosion Technician, she combines practical knowledge of real-world processes with a rigorous understanding of industry standards (API, NACE, ASME) to deliver actionable insights that help clients prevent failures and improve operations.

Dr. Sellers is a long-standing member of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) and the Association for Women in Science (AWIS), and an active participant in community science, technology, engineering, and mathematics outreach activities. She currently serves as the Co-Chair of the Equal Representation for Expert Witnesses (ERE) initiative.

Oil & Gas

Dr. Sellers has investigated failures and performance issues at refineries, offshore platforms, and liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities. She focuses on damage mechanisms (e.g., corrosion, stress corrosion cracking, hydrogen embrittlement) affecting process piping and vessels from a chemical engineering perspective, including the evaluation of operating temperatures, pressures, and process fluids. She has led root cause investigations of units and equipment such as reactors, heaters, heat exchangers, separators, pressure vessels, pumps, turbines, gaskets, valves, and analyzers/indicators/gauges.  

She has also assisted operators and owners in assessing integrity management programs, including inspection practices, damage mechanism reviews, and fitness-for-service evaluations. Her work regularly requires analysis of process flow diagrams (PFDs), piping and instrumentation diagrams (P&IDs), and inspection isometrics. She draws upon her Certified Risk Based Inspection Professional (API 580) and NACE Certified Corrosion Technician credentials, as well as extensive experience with federal and international code requirements and industry standards pertinent to process piping and natural gas utilities.

Industrial Process Facilities

Dr. Sellers has extensive experience evaluating systems, piping, and equipment in industrial process facilities including those used for pharmaceutical and polymer manufacturing, medical device sterilization, fertilizer and food production and storage, and biowaste processing, among others. She has investigated failures at large- and small-scale facilities, including those resulting in loss of containment events. She also assists clients who are designing and updating facilities with material selection questions and challenges.

Consumer Products and Medical Devices

Using her familiarity with materials characterization techniques, Dr. Sellers assists consumer products and medical device clients in investigating potential issues identified during design, manufacturing, testing, and use. She routinely consults on materials selection and performance, contamination analyses, process development and validation, extractable and leachable assessments, and product reliability evaluations and recalls.

Semiconductor Manufacturing and Thin Film Characterization

Dr. Sellers leverages her thin film synthesis and characterization background to help troubleshoot issues with integrated circuit fabrication equipment and semiconductor manufacturing processes. She has investigated the impacts of process upsets on tool integrity as well as failures of furnaces, deposition chambers, implanters, vacuum pumps, and etching systems. She has experience reviewing process documentation for historic and modern semiconductor manufacturing operations to inform toxicological and environmental assessments.  

Professional Background

Prior to joining Exponent, Dr. Sellers was a postdoctoral researcher at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center — Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (ERDC-CERL), where she developed and evaluated carbon nanotube, graphene, and metal oxide-based supercapacitors. Her doctoral thesis research at the University of Illinois at Urbana — Champaign (UIUC) focused on the chemical vapor and atomic layer deposition (CVD/ALD) of titanium dioxide and the optimization of its electrical properties for photocatalysis and supported metal catalysis. This entailed the extensive use of materials characterization techniques such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and scanning electron microscopy/energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM/EDS).

Before entering graduate school, Dr. Sellers held research appointments in the Micro-Total-Analytical Systems and Entry Control & Contraband Detection Technologies organizations at Sandia National Laboratories and in the Department of Chemistry at University College London.