Battelle Technical Fellow Amy Heintz Serves as Organizational Leader, Inventor, Mentor

Amy Heintz is a “clean sheet of paper” kind of scientist. She excels at starting from scratch on a problem and working systematically to solve the challenges. “We think mechanistically,” she said of people. “That’s how we get things done.”

But much of what Heintz is accomplishing at Battelle is far more than mechanistic. Starting in 2003 as a Research Scientist, she progressed up the organizational ladder as a Principal Research Scientist, Senior Research Scientist, Research Leader and for the past six years, Technical Fellow—a person recognized as a thought leader who provides leadership. Heintz has scaled the heights of achievement in her one-organization career—including Inventor of the Year in 2016 and CEO Award winner in 2024. With 45 patents in her portfolio and many more patent applications maturing, she is a Battelle Distinguished Inventor who has worked in chemistry and polymer science to numerous projects spanning multiple industries—aerospace, biopharma, medical devices, consumer products, industrial materials, and electronics.

Battelle's Technical Fellow Amy Heintz moderating a panel at the Arctic Circle Conference in Iceland.

As a Technical Fellow, Heintz works at the juncture of technical expertise and business strategy in Battelle’s three main businesses of national security, health and the environment. She helps to get transformative materials out of the lab and into real-world systems by working with customers and also overseeing Battelle’s internal research and development portfolio to make sure intellectual property is developed into such products as chemical sensors, drug delivery systems and thermal management.

For a scientist, Heintz is a remarkable people person. Known for her wit, eclectic taste in music and getting to the heart of matters with direct questions, she teaches younger scientists how to transform moments of surprise into invention and is astute at helping peers and clients learn what it is they really need, not what they think they want. Her understanding of science mixed with being a lover of stories makes for the perfect combination of traits for her job.

In fact, her first love was writing and learning about life from sitcoms. As a child of young parents growing up near Detroit, Heintz is a self-described nerd who wasn’t into sports. Moving across town in sixth grade was jarring for the youngster whose new high top shoes and haircut didn’t match with the vibe of her new school. But soon, her smarts began to help her establish her niche and she enrolled in a small physics class that provided the right environment for her to flourish. “What I really liked doing was taking physics and having that inform stories I was writing,” she said.

Dreams of reading philosophy by a river gave way to the more realistic endeavors at the University of Michigan, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry. “No matter what I decided to do, there were great professors and other students who were serious,” she said.

She found the medical field didn’t suit her but discovered a love for chemistry because of its demands of deduction and understanding of molecules. A professor, Colleen Pugh, accelerated her learning curve. “I was given a real project,” Heintz said. “We were trying to figure out how to control the structure of liquid crystalline polymers.”

Thoughts of becoming a college professor gave way to earning a Ph.D. in Polymer Science and Engineering from the University of Massachusetts (Amherst). “It had a polymer science department, with people who were doing all the sciences surrounding polymer science,” she said.

Heintz soon became an expert in spectroscopy. “We were using spectroscopy to understand how to make better polymer adhesive and foams, doing a lot of industrial work for companies, learning to put science into practice,” she said.

She began to grow outside the classroom as well, describing a “midlife crisis” in her mid 20s. Living in a cabin without running water, then in a barn on a Quaker farm were conscious choices to cultivate friends outside the world of science. “I hung around with people who were collectors of other people and lifestyles,” she said. “It made me less afraid of failure. I never got stuck. I knew I could live in a barn apartment and be OK.”

She found the love of her life, Matt Morris, while in graduate school. A Columbus native, Morris had been an acquaintance in Michigan and was working as an engineer when they rekindled their relationship. The pair settled in Columbus and Heintz reached out to a former UMass classmate, Jeff Cafmeyer, who is still a Materials Scientist at Battelle today. “Jeff liked to solve squishy problems and at that time, Battelle needed a spectroscopy specialist,” Heintz said. “I had been interested in helping the environment. I was hoping to work on bio-based plastic.”

While working on national security programs, Heintz met two senior scientists at Battelle who were materials experts, Bhima Vijayendren and Herman Benecke. “They were mentors,” she said, adding that she needed them. “There was a lot of talent here and it was competitive.”

Heintz worked on sample analysis for a while, but her first breakthrough at Battelle was a carbon nanotube project that she ended up leading. Vijayendren believed at the time that carbon nanotubes would be the foundation for a variety of uses. “So I’ve been working on carbon nanotubes since 2005,” she said, adding that the endeavor would take longer than she imagined. “It can take 30 years or more to have a new material come into the market. But carbon nanotubes are more efficient for heating and those gains are good for the environment. I’m still very much involved with that mission of helping the planet.”

When Heintz was named a Battelle Fellow in 2018, she had become influential in problem solving for industrial customers. “I was thinking as big as I could,” she said. “I wanted a role where we could use materials in all our markets.”

That was a year after Battelle was under new leadership with the arrival of President and CEO Lou Von Thaer and Executive Vice President of Science and Technology Matt Vaughan. The pair were focused on the long-term health of Battelle and saw the upside potential Heintz could offer as an inventor/mentor.

Heintz with Battelle President and CEO Lou Von Thaer after accepting the CEO Award in 2024.

Her Fellowship came attached with leading the organization’s Tech Council. “The Tech Council has been a massive accelerator of innovation, of creativity, of quality and integrity across the institute, and without Amy, we wouldn't be anywhere near where we are today from technical standpoint,” Vaughan said. “She exemplifies what Battelle hopes each of its employees becomes, and that’s through her leadership, through her mentoring, her coaching, her insistence on high quality work. She's had an impact on thousands of people—an impact that will resonate for generations to come.”

In her role as Fellow, Heintz uses a career’s worth of lessons learned to look at the scientific development landscape from the horizon level view. “What we do is true and real and we sustain things for the long term,” she said. “If we do something at Battelle, it has impact and it works. We weave excellence into everything we do."

Today, Heintz continues on her path of invention and mentorship with an eye to the future. She prefers intense, rapid iteration with a tight group of cohesive colleagues—a long way from that awkward, unsure sixth-grader at a fancy new school of mean girls. “That scared girl is gone,” she said. “I enjoy trying things that have never been done. I’m fortunate that Battelle is the kind of organization where we get to explore new areas of science and technology. I spend a lot of my time thinking about what could be the ‘next big thing.’ I encourage my team to also have that fearlessness. I want our people to examine new concepts with their own eyes and hands—really figure out if it works."