Jimmy O'Dea
Assistant Deputy Director for Electrification
Caltrans
Panelist: From Potential to Progress—New Legislation Creates Opportunities for Construction Professionals
Jimmy O’Dea is the assistant deputy director for Transportation Electrification at the California Department of Transportation. His work focuses on advancing zero-emission solutions across the Department’s transportation portfolio. He was previously deputy director of trucks at CALSTART and senior vehicles analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, where he played key roles in the strengthening and adoption of first-of-their-kind policies for electric trucks and buses. Dr. O’Dea was a Science and Engineering Congressional Fellow in the office of U.S. Senator Brian Schatz. In postdoctoral and graduate research in chemistry at Cornell and UC Santa Barbara, he studied materials used in fuel cells, batteries, and solar cells.