Leslie Dewan is a cofounder and chief scientist for Transatomic Power, a nuclear-reactor design company developing safe and environmentally-friendly nuclear power plants. She received a PhD in nuclear engineering from MIT in 2013, with a research focus on computational nuclear materials. She also received bachelor's degrees in mechanical engineering and nuclear engineering for MIT. Before starting her PhD studies, she worked for a robotics company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she designed search-and-rescue robots and equipment for in-field identification of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. Dewan is a U.S. Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellow and an MIT Presidential Fellow, and she was among the Forbes' "30 Under 30" in energy in 2012.