Confirmed Invited Speakers (3 April 2023)

Dr. Felix N. Büchi

Electrochemistry Laboratory, Energy and Environment Division, Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI)
OLGA/115, CH-5232 Villigen PSI, Switzerland

felix.buechi@psi.ch

https://www.psi.ch/en/lec/fuel-cell-systems-and-diagnostics

OrcID: 0000-0002-3541-4591, ResearcherID : K-9247-2015

H-factor:

Education

1979 – 1989             University of Berne (Switzerland) 1984: Dipl. Chem.; 1989 Dr. phil. nat.
 

Dr. Steven Holdcroft holds a Canada Research Chair in Electrochemical Materials. He is a Professor of Chemistry at Simon Fraser University, and a former President of the Canadian Society for Chemistry. He researches materials for electrochemical energy conversion & storage. He is author of 300 peer-reviewed articles. He was a board of director of the Canadian Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Association for 10 years. Dr. Holdcroft has received the Macromolecular Science and Engin¬eering Division Award of the Chemical Institute of Canada, the Canadian Society of Canada RioTinto Alcan Award for electrochemistry, and is the recipient of the Outstanding Alumni Award for Academic Achievement. With three former students, he cofounded Vancouver-based Ionomr Innovations Inc., a thriving 50+ person SFU spin-out commercializing materials for clean energy. In 2021 he was elected to the fellowship of the Royal Society of Canada.

Hiroshi Ito, PhD
Leader of Thermofluid System Group,
Research Institute for Energy Conservation,
National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST)

His area of interest includes polymer based electrochemical energy conversion devices with hydrogen.

Dr. Rangachary Mukundan (Mukund) is a senior Scientist in the Energy Technology area at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). He worked for 25 years at the Los Alamos National Laboratory before joining Berkeley labs in September of 2022. His research interests include Fuel cells, Electrolyzers, Flow Batteries and Sensors. He is serving as deputy director in DOE’s Million Mile Fuel Cell Truck (M2FCT) and Hydrogen from Next generation Electrolyzers of Water (H2NEW) consortia. His primary research focus in these consortia is durability and development of accelerated stress tests. Mukund received his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia) in February 1997. He is the co-inventor on 8 US patents and has authored over 200 peer-reviewed journal and transaction papers, cited over 11,000 times. His work has also been recognized through numerous awards including two R&D 100 awards (1999, 2017), the Scientific American’s top 50 Science and Technology achievements for 2003, the J.B Wagner Award of the High Temperature Materials Division of the Electrochemical Society in 2005 and the Sensor Division outstanding achievement award in 2016. He served on the Board of Directors of the Electrochemical Society from 2006-2008 as the sensor division chair and was the technical editor in the area of Sensors and Measurement Sciences for the ECS Journals from 2011 to 2018. He is a fellow of the ECS and AAAS.

Dr Anders Ødegård is senior project manager at SINTEF, one of Europe's largest non-profit R&D institutes. He studied chemistry in Trondheim, Norway before he stayed 5 years at Fraunhofer ISE in Freiburg, Germany researching fuel cells and obtained his PhD degree. Since 2005 he has continued research on hydrogen technologies at SINTEF in Norway, covering both fuel cells and electrolysers, from materials development up to large scale pilot projects. Projects include design and piloting of hydrogen ships and heavy-duty trucks, including hydrogen infrastructure and safety aspects. Anders is now coordinator of the two EU-funded REFHYNE projects, where 10 and 100 MW PEM electrolysers from ITM/Linde are to be demonstrated at Shell's Energy and Chemicals Park in Cologne, Germany.

Dr. Andrew Park is an R&D Principal Engineer with The Chemours Company, and has over a decade of experience in the manufacture and evaluation of membranes and membrane electrode assemblies for hydrogen fuel cells and water electrolyzers. Currently, Andrew leads projects in Nafion™ membrane and ionomer research and development at Chemours. He is the principal investigator on a DOE-funded grant aimed at exploring the next generation of membranes for PEM water electrolyzers, focusing on performance and durability implications of thin, additive-containing reinforced membranes. Andrew is passionate about enabling the hydrogen economy through transformational materials research and commercialization of promising technologies.

Jennifer Peron is Associate Professor at Université Paris Cité, France, and works actively on the development of electrocatalysts for both Proton Exchange Membrane Water Electrolysis and Alkaline Exchange Membrane Water Electrolysis. She obtained her Masters in Molecular Chemistry and Chemical Engineering in 2004 and her PhD in 2007 at the Institut Charles Gerhardt in Montpellier. From 2008 to 2010, she worked as associate researcher at the Institute for Fuel Cell Innovation from the Canadian National Research Council in Vancouver. She then spent one year at the Collège de France in Paris and was recruited in 2011 as an assistant Professor at the Université Paris Diderot. Along her career, she has been working on polyaromatic and polyheterocyclic proton conducting polymer synthesis, the preparation of catalyst layers with non-perfluorinated ionomers, and on studying the degradation of membrane-electrode assemblies in proton exchange membrane fuel cells. She then moved to the preparation of hybrid materials and nanomaterials for other energy conversion devices including photovoltaic and thermoelectrics and the conversion of biomass into high value molecules. Her research activities are now dedicated to the synthesis of nanomaterials and hierarchically structured materials and their applications as electrocatalysts into electrolysis devices for H₂ production.

Svitlana Pylypenko is an Associate Professor in the Chemistry Department at the Colorado School of Mines. She is also involved in the interdisciplinary Materials Science Program at Mines and holds a joint appointment at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Svitlana received her B.S. and M.S. in chemistry and chemical engineering from the National Technical University of Ukraine and her Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of New Mexico. Svitlana’s group at Mines investigates surfaces and interfaces of applied materials with an emphasis on building relationships between surface composition and structure, material properties, and their performance with the eventual goal of designing next-generation materials based on earth-abundant elements, which provide high efficiency at a fraction of the cost. Research in her group focuses on multi-technique, multiscale analysis, and in-situ and operando studies bridging surface analysis, surface science, and catalysis.

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Simon Thiele completed his PhD on tomography for fuel cells at the University of Freiburg in 2013. From 2011 until 2017 he was group leader of the junior research group ‘porous media’ at the same institute. Since 2018 he is leader of the Electrocatalytic Interface Engineering research department at the Helmholtz Institute Erlangen-Nürnberg for Renewable Energy. Also since 2018 he is a professor at the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the technical faculty of the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg. His research focuses on novel concepts for electrochemical conversion devices such as fuel cells or electrolysers.

Dr. Hui Xu has recently joined Envision Energy as CTO, Green Hydrogen Envision Energy and Head, H₂ Center of Excellence near Boston, Massachusetts. He is now building a team to develop water electrolysis technologies for green H₂ production, which is crucial for Envision’s global NET ZERO mission. Dr. Xu brings in 20 years of experience in the design and manufacturing of electrolyzer and fuel cell systems. Prior to joining Envision, he was CTO at Giner, Inc., a world leader in electrolyzer development and manufacturing. In his capacity at Giner, he oversaw key component design and system development for a variety of energy technologies including low or high temperature fuel cells, PEM and alkaline water electrolyzers, and CO₂ conversion. Dr. Xu earned his Ph. D degree in chemical engineering from University of Connecticut and subsequently pursued his postdoctoral studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He has published more than 50 peer-reviewed papers and filed 10 patents. In 2021, Dr. Xu received prestigious Special Recognition Award in US Department of Energy ’s H₂ and Fuel Cell Annual Merit Review Meeting, with two collaborators from Plug Power. He is Treasurer of Energy Technology Division of the Electrochemical Society. He is an Institutional Fellow at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and adjunct faculty of University a Buffalo, The State University of New York.

Hongmei YU, Professor, Ph. D
Leader of Efficient Electrolysis Group Laboratory of Fuel Cells, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)
Deputy General Secretary of National Technical Committee 342 on Fuel Cell & Flow Battery of Standardization Administration of China
Research Field: Proton Exchange Membrane Water Electrolysis & Fuel Cell, Alkaline Anion Exchange Membrane Water Electrolysis & Fuel Cell

Dr. Piotr Zelenay received Ph.D. and D.Sc. (“habilitation”) degrees in chemistry from the University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland. He was a postdoctoral research fellow at Texas A&M University (1983-1986), a visiting professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (1988, 1989, 1990-92), University of Alicante (1994), Colorado State University (1996-1997), and the University of Padua (2019). Dr. Zelenay was a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry, the University of Warsaw from 1983 to 1997 when he accepted research position at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). He has been associated with Materials Physics and Applications Division at LANL for the past 24 years. He is currently Los Alamos Laboratory Fellow and Scientist 6 (one of ca. 15 at this highest-level R&D position in the laboratory employing ca. 15,000 workers), concentrating on fundamental and applied aspects of polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC) science and technology, electrocatalysis and electrode kinetics. His research at Los Alamos has focused on electrocatalysis of oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and methanol and dimethyl ether (DME) oxidation in PEFCs, hydrogen and oxygen evolution reactions water electrolyzers, and electrochemical reduction of CO₂ to value-added products. Among Dr. Zelenay’s many accomplishments in the area of fuel cell electrocatalysis, especially worth mentioning are (i) leading role in the development of non-precious metal ORR catalysts worldwide; (ii) the discovery of ruthenium crossover in the direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC; also found in other fuel cells operating with Ru-containing anodes, such as the reformate-air fuel cell); (iii) advancement of the direct DME fuel cell performance to the level that now matches that of the state-of-the-art DMFC. Dr. Piotr Zelenay has over 200 research publications to his credit, many in renowned scientific journals, including Nature, Nature Catalysis, Science, Chemical Reviews, Accounts of Chemical Research, Angewandte Chemie, Energy & Environmental Science, and Advanced Materials. He has co-authored over 480 presentations, including more than 200 invited, keynote, and plenary lectures. Dr. Zelenay’s publications have been cited more than 27,000 times, with 42 of his publications cited more than 100 times, including two with more than 3,500 citations (Science, 2011 and Chemical Reviews, 2007), one with over 2,200 citations (Nature, 2006), and three more with ca. 1,000 citations. Dr. Zelenay has co-authored 26 patents and patent applications in the area of polymer electrolyte fuel cells. Since joining Los Alamos Fuel Cell Program in 1997 he has successfully led numerous large projects totaling ca. $75M in research funding and received numerous awards and recognitions. Among them, he was awarded Fellowship of the International Society of Electrochemistry (2021) for “excellent scientific record and outstanding contributions to electrochemical science”, DOE Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Program Fuel Cell R&D Awards “in recognition of outstanding contributions to fuel cell technologies” (in 2010 & 2020); R&D 100 Award (2017) for his electrocatalysis research; Los Alamos National Laboratory Fellowship “in recognition of sustained outstanding scientific contributions” (2016); National Professorship in Chemistry by the President of Poland (2015); Los Alamos National Laboratory Fellows Prize “for longstanding contributions to the understanding of non-precious metal electrocatalysts for fuel cells” (2015); Fellowship of the Electrochemical Society “for major contributions in the development of materials and concepts for polymer electrolyte fuel cells” (2014); and Research Award of the Electrochemical Society Energy Technology Division “for fundamental and applied advances in polymer electrolyte fuel cell science and technology, electrocatalysis, and electrode kinetics” (2013). Dr. Zelenay is a co-director of Electrocatalysis Consortium (ElectroCat, part the DOE-EERE Energy Materials Network), an active member of International Society of Electrochemistry, the Electrochemical Society, and Materials Research Society, a member of the editorial boards for Electrocatalysis, and ChemElectroChem, the steering committee board member of the International Academy of Electrochemical Energy Science (IAOEES), International Scientific Board member for Bar-Ilan University Center for Energy and Sustainability, the University of California Merced Nanomaterials Center for Energy and Sensing (MACES), and chairman of the technical advisory board of Pajarito Powder, LLC, the sole company in the world commercializing non-precious metal ORR electrocatalysts.

Prof. O’Hayre’s group at the Colorado School of Mines develops new materials and devices to enable alternative energy technologies, with a particular focus on ceramic fuel cells and electrolyzers. Current fundamental research interests extend to aspects of high-temperature catalysis, electrochemistry, solid-state-ionics, electronic and ionic oxides. Prof. O’Hayre is lead author of Fuel Cell Fundamentals, the world’s best-selling textbook on fuel cell science and technology (translated into both Chinese and Korean) and has published >150 peer-reviewed publications in the field, including papers in Science and Nature, as well as several patents and book chapters. He has received several young-investigator research and teaching honors including the 2009 Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering (PECASE), the US’s top honor for early-career scientists and engineers.

Avner Rothschild is a professor of Materials Science and Engineering and the head of the Sustainability Center at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. He studied physics and materials engineering at the Technion, and graduated in 2003 with a PhD on thin film metal-oxide gas sensors. After a three-year postdoc on solid-state ionics at MIT he returned to the Technion as a faculty member at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and the head of the Electrochemical Materials & Devices research group. His research focuses on electrochemical and photoelectrochemical materials and devices for water splitting as a means of sustainable production of green hydrogen from renewable energies such as solar and wind. Professor Rothschild is a co-founder of H₂Pro, a startup company that develops a breakthrough water splitting technology for low-cost production of green hydrogen at scale. He was a member of several European consortia and had an ERC consolidator grant on photoelectrochemical water splitting. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (since 2021) and a Kavli fellow of the National Academy of Sciences USA (2017). Professor Rothschild has received distinguished prizes and awards, including the Samson Prime Minister's Prize for Global Innovation in Alternative Fuels (2020), the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Materials Chemistry Division Horizon Prize: Stephanie L. Kwolek Award (2022), and the Climate Solutions Prize: Israel Breakthrough Research (2022).

Dr Charudatta Patil is Manager Green Hydrogen in Shell’s Project and Technology Organisation and based out of Bangalore India. He has a global role with teams in Europe, United States and Asia, and is part of larger H2 and Syngas Organisation covering all sources and end uses of Hydrogen. Charudatta is a Chemical Engineer and holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering with focus on clean H2 production, as well as CO2 capture. He did his research at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, and since then worked in Shell Technology Center Amsterdam for close to 2 decades. Prior to that Charudatta graduated from UDCT Mumbai and worked for Reliance Industries Limited, where he was part of commissioning of largest single location refinery in the world in Jamnagar in the 90s. During his career at Shell he has worked in all parts of opportunity realisation, starting from ideation, new business development, front end design, through to construction, commissioning and operation of world scale GTL as well as petrochemical plants. His focus areas have been syngas and hydrogen, as well as base oil units. Currently his focus is on maturing electrochemical processes to produce H2 (and syngas) as well as technology assurance for large capital projects. His team consists of specialists in the areas of electrochemistry, electrical and power electronics, as well as renewable integration covering end to end value chain. He is a recognised Principal Technical Expert in Shell organisation, alongside his Manager role, where he works closely with Shell Emerging Energy Solutions business, Shell Ventures as well as Contracting and Procurement to assure business opportunities at scale, identify and invest in emerging start-ups/game changing options in area of Green H2, as well as securing strong supply base for Shell in Green H2.

Siemens Energy Global GmbH & Co. KG
Transformation of Industry
Product Management
Freyeslebenstr. 1
91058 Erlangen, Germany

Dr. Yashar Musayev is a long time & result-oriented manager with expertise in coating technology, nanotechnology, as well as R&D, new energy business, electrolyze, e-mobility and fuel-cell technology, green hydrogen, and for large series production for automotive & automotive supplier topics. Comprehensive international experience and intercultural competency acquired during multi-year assignments in EU, USA, Japan, China, South Korea, Great Britain, and CIS countries.

John W. Weidner
College of Engineering and Applied Science
University of Cincinnati
Cincinnati, OH 45221

Dr. John W. Weidner is Dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Cincinnati. Prior to his appointment as dean in August of 2019, he was the Chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of South Carolina (USC), Director of their Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Center, and a Distinguished Scientist at the Savannah River National Laboratory. He received his BS degree in chemical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1986 and his PhD in chemical engineering from NC State University in 1991. He has advised 24 PhD students, generated over $10 million in research funding, and published over 125 refereed journal articles in the field of electrochemical engineering, particularly in the synthesis and characterization of electrocatalysts and electrochemically active materials, and the mathematical modeling of advanced batteries, fuel cells, and hydrogen production processes. Dr. Weidner was a visiting scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the University of California-Berkeley, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems. He was awarded the Golden Key Faculty Award by USC in 2006 for “Excellence in Integrating Undergraduate Teaching and Research”. In 2008 and 2010, he received the Energy Research Award from the E.ON International Research Initiative and the Research Award from the Energy Technology Division of the Electrochemical Society (ECS), respectively, for his work on large-scale hydrogen production technology. For his overall contributions to electrochemical research, he received the USC Educational Foundation Award for Research in Science, Mathematics and Engineering (2013), the Education Leadership Award at the Energy Inc. Summit in Charlotte, NC (2016), the Breakthrough Leadership in Research Award from USC (2016), and the Carl Wagner Memorial Award from ECS (2019). He is a Fellow of ECS and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE).

Frank Allebrod had his first scientific experience with hydrogen at the Universidad Magallanes in 2006. There, he conducted a feasibility study on the storage of the enormous wind potential of the Patagonia region. In 2013, he made his PhD at DTU Denmark in the field of alkaline high-temperature electrolysis. After further advancing the project during his time as a postdoctoral researcher, Frank Allebrod took a position as a stack developer at H-TEC SYSTEMS in 2015. H-TEC SYSTEMS has since grown from less than 10 employees to now over 300 employees. Frank Allebrod leads stack development as Vice President R&D Stack. H-TEC SYSTEMS' electrolyzers and stacks are among the most efficient in the market.

Graduated from Grenoble Institute of Technology (INPG) in Electrochemistry, she obtained a PhD in Materials Science and gained industrial experience in the field of materials for energy and automotive markets before joining CEA / Liten in 2005 as the head of the SOFC/SOEC testing and characterization research group. From 2010 to 2022, she was leading first the Hydrogen Technologies Laboratory and then the Hydrogen Technologies Department. She also supervised during 4 years a team in charge of techno-economical and life cycle assessment for new energies technologies.

She is now Deputy Director for hydrogen technologies of Liten institute, in charge of hydrogen production, storage and fuel cells.

Julie Mougin is author/co-author of more than 50 publications in reviewed scientific journals (100 in total), five book chapters and six patents.

David Peterson has close to 30 years of experience in hydrogen production and fuel cell technologies. This includes more than 15 years with the Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Technologies Office within the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy where, most recently, he has been the electrolysis technical lead and is now the acting Hydrogen Production Program Manager. Prior to joining DOE, David worked for a series of small companies in Colorado where he conducted a variety of energy- and chemical-related R&D activities in areas ranging from ceramic membrane reactors to Fischer-Tropsch to fuel processing to fuel cells. David received his BS in chemical engineering from the University of Virginia and his M.S. and Ph.D., also in chemical engineering, from Georgia Tech.

Thembakazi Mali holds a Ph. D in Chemistry and a Graduate Diploma in Engineering in Environmental Engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand. Her career spans over two decades in the energy and petrochemical fields. Presently, she is the Senior Vice President for Research and Technology at Sasol, an international integrated chemicals and energy company. Research and Technology (R&T) is at the forefront of Sasol’s Purpose, “Innovating for a better future” by identifying, assessing and developing novel technology options for sustainable Sasol operations., They focus on developing sustainable technology solutions to guide pathways for Future Sasol, while also spearheading licensing opportunities for Sasol’s proprietary technologies. Before joining SASOL, she was the Interim CEO at SANEDI, which is a state-funded applied energy research, development and deployment organisation. Until recently, she has served as the South African representative and executive committee member to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Technology Collaboration Programmes on Ocean Energy Systems, Bioenergy and Solar Cooling and Heating.