W. Jud Ready is the deputy director, Innovation Initiatives, for the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) Institute for Materials. He has also been an adjunct professor in the School of Materials Science & Engineering at Georgia Tech and a principal research engineer on the research faculty of Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) for 19 years.

Prior to joining the Georgia Tech faculty, he worked for a major military contractor, General Dynamics, as well as in small business at MicroCoating Technologies. He has served as principal investigator (PI) or co-PI for grants totaling approximately $18 million awarded by the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, NASA, National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institute of Standards and Technology, industry, charitable foundations, private citizens, and the states of Georgia and Florida.

His current research focuses primarily on energy, aerospace, nanomaterial applications, and electronics reliability. Ready has more than 1,700 citations from his numerous refereed publications on electronic and nanoscale materials, and his research developments have been presented at well over two dozen international conferences, including invited talks in Prague, Hong Kong, Berlin, Tokyo, Uzbekistan, Austria, and Chile.

In 2002, Ready received the TMS Young Leaders Professional Development Award from the TMS Electronic, Magnetic & Photonic Materials Division (now the Functional Materials Division). In 2005, he was selected as the TMS/Japan Institute of Metals and Materials Young Leaders International Scholar. He has served as chair of the TMS Nanotechnology, Education, and Membership & Student Development Committees. He was first elected to the TMS Board of Directors in 2005 as director of Membership & Student Development and again in 2010 as director of Content Development & Dissemination. In 2015, he was named a TMS Brimacombe Medalist, which recognizes mid-career individuals for sustained excellence and achievement in business, technology, education, public policy, or science related to materials science and engineering.