Dr. Benji Maruyama is the Leader of the Flexible Materials and Processes Research Team and Principal Materials Research Engineer in the Air Force Research Laboratory, Materials & Manufacturing Directorate. Dr. Maruyama pioneered ARES™, Autonomous Research Systems for Materials Development. ARES™ employs fully autonomous research robots able to design and conduct their own experiments in rapid, closed loop iterative fashion. He is also the point of contact for carbon materials for the Materials & Manufacturing Directorate. He leads basic and applied research on the synthesis and processing science of carbon nanotubes. His background and interests include carbon and Low-D nanomaterials, energy storage, field emission, carbon, polymer and metal matrix composites, imaging of complex 3D microstructures and combinatorial experimentation. He is currently involved in the study of the origins of chiral growth for carbon nanotubes, nanostructured materials for battery electrodes, in-situ experimentation, and catalyst development.