Daniel Tkacik serves as the Executive Director of the Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation at Carnegie Mellon University. In this role, he leads strategic operations, fosters interdisciplinary research, and advances institutional partnerships to drive clean energy innovation and sustainable technology deployment.

He works closely with faculty, researchers, and leadership across CMU to bridge academic breakthroughs with industry, policy, and market implementation. Additionally, he plays a key role in major regional efforts like the Resilient Energy Technology and Infrastructure (RETI) Consortium, a $160M NSF-funded innovation engine aimed at supercharging the industrial energy innovation economy of western Pennsylvania and West Virginia. He also leads the University Energy Institute Leadership Collaborative (UEILC), a network of US-based university energy institute leaders with a mission of inspiring meaningful collaborations between university energy institutes across the nation.