Leadership Team
Learn more about the expertise and technical skills of the water research team and staff at NREL.
View NREL's water power team leaders below, explore our full staff listing, or check out our Beneath the Surface profiles, a series that highlights team members' stories from career paths to passion for their work and vision for the future of energy.
Water Power Laboratory Program Manager
Al LiVecchi helped establish NREL's Water Power Program and built the technical team that focuses on marine and hydrokinetic technologies. LiVecchi is responsible for planning and executing NREL's portfolio of U.S. Department of Energy-sponsored marine and hydrokinetic and hydropower projects and has primary responsibility for establishing productive partnerships with external organizations.
Strategic Innovation and Outreach Subprogram Manager
Tessa Greco is a project and portfolio manager. Greco, who has over 13 years of experience, specializes in relationship management, mentorship, process improvement, and project management in academic and research organizations, resulting in maximum impact for individual projects and research portfolios.
Marine Energy Subprogram Manager
Michael Lawson is the water power group manager at NREL. Lawson leads a team of engineers and scientists working to advance marine energy technologies and has focused on numerical modeling and system design since joining NREL's marine energy team in 2010.
Hydropower Subprogram Manager
Stuart Cohen is a senior researcher at NREL. Cohen has spent more than 17 years analyzing long-term grid planning problems using optimization models and other tools. He leads projects that explore the future role of hydropower and pumped storage hydropower in the U.S. electric sector and projects that identify environmental shifts and their impacts considering variations in water availability. He also researches other technology developments and studies policy.
Water Power Program Operations Lead
Christa Nixon has been at NREL since 2018 and is responsible for overseeing the planning, management, execution, and reporting of all work associated with the water power program.
Research Fellow
Bob Thresher has more than 40 years of research, development, engineering, and management experience in wind technology, plant engineering, and aerospace systems.
Chief Engineer
Jochem Weber is the chief engineer of NREL's Water Power Program, where he pursues a holistic deductive system approach to problem solving in research, science, engineering, technology, innovation, and management.
Share
Last Updated July 2, 2025