Academic Credentials
  • Ph.D., Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 2020
  • M.S., Chemical Engineering Practice, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 2016
  • B.Ch.E., Chemical Engineering, University of Delaware, 2014
Licenses & Certifications
  • Blasting Certificate of Competency (MA)
Professional Affiliations
  • American Institute of Chemical Engineers-AIChE (Member)
  • American Chemical Society-ACS (Member)
  • Electrochemical Society-ECS (Member)

Dr. Orella is a Senior Associate in Exponent's Thermal Science Practice with a background in electrochemical systems and electrocatalysis, green fuels and chemicals including biofuels and electofuels, chemical reaction kinetics, thermodynamics, mass-transfer, and process modeling. 

During his time at Exponent, Dr. Orella has performed abuse testing and characterization of commercial and novel batteries, dust hazard analyses, and testing and characterization of explosible dusts. He has used fundamental image feature recognition techniques to analyze the plumes present during chemical releases. He specializes in the rigorous computational and experimental analysis of complex chemical-engineering systems with a focus on process safety and efficiency. Previously, Dr. Orella has worked deeply with electrolyzers to generate renewable biofuels and green chemicals from reaction systems involving lignin and other biomass-based compounds.

During his Ph.D. work in the department of Chemical Engineering at MIT, Dr. Orella developed numerical models to support research in multiple sustainable fuel and energy technologies. First, he utilized concepts from stochastic chemical kinetics to implement a Gillespie-based kinetic Monte Carlo analysis of lignin biosynthesis. Next, he worked to automate image analysis for surface characterization techniques in electrocatalytic devices so that high-throughput analysis of potential electrode materials could readily be classified. Dr. Orella then implemented statistical inference techniques to investigate the electrochemical kinetics present in carbon dioxide reduction processing. Dr. Orella has also developed and executed methods for techno-economic analysis of industrial electrochemical processes.