Sean Wood serves as managing director of the Georgia Tech Advanced Battery Center (GTABC), a role he has held since July 2026. The center works to accelerate research, development, and education in battery technologies for vehicles, grid energy storage, and aviation, and to serve as an R&D, educational, and workforce development hub for the battery and vehicle industries in the Southeast. At GTABC, Wood oversees the design and buildout of the center's $15 million pilot-scale manufacturing facility, directs equipment procurement and vendor negotiations, and and works with SEI's corporate engagement team to build the industry partnerships that will make use of the facility. 

Wood joined Georgia Tech in November 2023 as managing director of UNCAGE-ME, a $13.2 million Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the Department of Energy, a role he held until July 2026. There he managed the center's budget and reporting across its partner institutions, led a reorganization of the center's research portfolio, and developed the publications dashboard used to track its scientific output.

Prior to joining Georgia Tech, Wood spent five years at Tesla in San Diego, which he joined through its 2019 acquisition of Maxwell Technologies. There he supported dry electrode process development and cell manufacturing scale-up. Earlier in his career, he conducted battery research at Idaho National Laboratory. His technical expertise spans the full battery development lifecycle, including materials synthesis, advanced characterization, electrochemistry, and electrode manufacturing, and he has performed research into other electrochemical energy storage and conversion devices, including supercapacitors and water electrolyzers. 

Wood holds a B.S. from Georgia Tech and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin, both in chemical engineering, and has authored peer-reviewed publications on lithium-ion battery materials and characterization. He currently serves as a member of Georgia Tech's Research Faculty Senate.