Leslie M. Phinney received her B.S. in aerospace engineering from The University of Texas at Austin in 1990. She then spent a year in England with a Churchill scholarship, earning a Certificate of Post-Graduate studies from Cambridge University. Leslie received her M.S. and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 1994 and 1997, respectively. She was a member of the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1997 until 2003. She joined Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) in Albuquerque, New Mexico in August 2003.
Dr. Leslie Phinney is currently a Manager of the Thermal Sciences and Engineering Department. Her research interests are in the areas of heat transfer, thermosciences, and microsystems with an emphasis on microscale heat transfer, thermal analysis and simulation, thermal microactuators, experimental techniques, thermomechanical effects, laser processing, adhesion in microsystems, and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) reliability testing. From Jan. 2012 – May 2013, she was in a rotational position in the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Programs Office Department focusing on improving the research environment and interactions between mission and research efforts at SNL.
Leslie is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and a recipient of the Society of Women Engineers Prism Award in 2017. She received a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award from 2000-2004.
