The Organisers

Greg Metha is a professor in the School of Physical Sciences, Faculty of Sciences, at the University of Adelaide. Greg has been studying the interactions of light and matter for over 30 years; his research uses light sources across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from lasers to synchrotrons, investigating a range of molecular phenomena to discover new molecules and explore their properties. He heads the Metal Cluster Laboratory which focuses on the exploration of the physical and chemical properties of metallic sub-nanometre particles underpinned by advanced computational modelling, the advancement of novel catalysts based on metal clusters, and building novel apparatus and instrumentation including pioneering work developing gas-phase photocatalysis reactors that operate under concentrated radiation. His most recent work involves using light to produce chemical fuels directly from sunlight such as hydrogen from water-splitting, and hydrocarbons from CO₂ reduction.

 

Professor Gus Nathan is the inaugural Energy Professional of the Year from the Australian Institute of Energy, SA, a Fellow of the Combustion Institute, a recipient of a Discovery Outstanding Researcher Award from the Australian Research Council and an ATSE KH Sutherland medallist. As the founding Director of The University of Adelaide’s Centre for Energy Technology and Deputy Director of the Institute of Mineral and Energy Resources, he has led the University’s growing focus on the low-carbon transition for heavy industry.  He has led the development of six technology platforms, one of which is the flame for Sydney Olympic Relay Torch. The other technologies all provide cleaner energy for heavy industry, one of which is in ongoing commercial use and the others are being up-scaled toward commercial use. He has also published some 250 papers in international journals, 300 in peer reviewed conferences, 50 commissioned reports and 11 patents.

Bassam Dally is Professor of Mechanical Engineering in the Clean Combustion Center, Physical Science and Engineering Division of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). He obtained his PhD in Combustion Science, from the University of Sydney in 1998. In the same year he joined the School of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Adelaide, serving as Deputy Head of School from 2001-2010 and Head of School from 2010-14. He helped to establish the Centre for Energy Technology, where he served as Deputy Director from 2009-2020. Prof Dally has contributed to many research fields including combustion science, aerodynamics, heat transfer, applied optics, computational fluid dynamics, and renewable energy including wind, solar and tidal wave. His current research is focused on developing cost-effective and innovative technologies that deliver carbon mitigation under the circular carbon economy approach. In particular, he is working on technology solutions to decarbonise heavy industries through flexible integration of renewable sources such electrification, hydrogen and ammonia combustion and concentrated solar thermal. Prof Dally has published more than 90 journal papers in leading international journals. He collaborates widely with many national and international researchers and have jointly attracted ~$39M in funding from ARENA (4 projects) and ~$5M from the ARC (11 research grants).

Prof Tatsuya Kodama is a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering, at Niigata University in Japan.

Prof Kodama has been working in the field of concentrating solar thermochemistry for more than 20 years, developing the technologies on two-step water splitting cycles, solar coal gasification, and solar methane reforming. He has authored over 100 research papers and some international patents in the concentrating solar thermochemistry field.

He conducted one of the biggest Japanese R&D projects on solar thermochemical fuels (about 2 million US$ project (NEXT) promoted by Japan Cabinet Office in 2010-2013).  Also, in this another project, an100-kW new solar beam-down system was built in Japan for demonstrating his innovative solar “particle fluidised bed” reactor to split H2O/CO2 to produce H2/CO and to gasify coal or biomass to produce syngas.

He is currently one of the key project partners of ARENA Solar Thermochemical Hydrogen Research and Development (2018-2022) to demonstrate his solar particle fluidised bed reactor to split H2O using 500 kWth solar facility of CSIRO, Newcastle, Australia.

He established the Japan CSP society (http://www.iae.or.jp/scste/) about 10 years ago, together with the Institute of Applied Energy (http://www.iae.or.jp/e/), and now is the chairman of this society. About 10 Japanese companies are now the members of this society, including the Japanese companies having great interests in solar fuels and CSP. Thus he has a large CSP and solar fuels network among Japanese industries, institutes, universities and some of organizations promoted by ministries (JST, NEDO, etc.).

Dr McDaniel is a Principal Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories and holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles.  His research experience spans a range of topical areas important to functional materials and their application to developing technologies for energy storage and conversion. These include complex oxides used in the production of hydrogen by thermochemical water splitting and high temperature electrochemical processes. He has authored or coauthored over 100 peer reviewed papers and technical reports.

Dr McDaniel is the Solar Thermochemical Technology Lead for HydroGEN Advanced Water Splitting Materials Consortium (h2awsm.org), which is a US Department of Energy—Energy Materials Network dedicated to advancing the technology readiness level of renewable hydrogen production. Through HydroGEN and other programs, he manages multidisciplinary teams comprised of US National Laboratories and Universities in collaborative R&D settings focused on developing and demonstrating technologies for sustainable solar fuels.

Phil O’ Neil is a Hydrogen Transformation Partner at Worley and Senior Associate at Advisian, which is part of the Worley Group. He is an experienced management consultant and adviser with a demonstrated history of working in the engineering industry. Skilled in green hydrogen developments, techno-economics assessments, carbon management, embedding renewable energy and climate change specialising in heavy industries such as manufacturing, mining and minerals, oil and gas and chemicals.

Since 2012, Ashley has worked as a business analyst, energy strategist and commercialisation officer for companies, government entities, and start-ups.  In her current role as an Energy Transformation Engineer at Woodside Energy, Ashley evaluates technological and commercial aspects of the hydrogen value chain.  This includes technologies and system designs covering the upstream energy source, production, mid-stream processing, storage and distribution, and end use.  Ashley holds a PhD from Monash University in Materials Science and Engineering and Masters degrees in Physics Engineering and Business Administration from Appalachian State University.  She also conducted miscroscopy and microanalysis research at the Technical University of Denmark and studied international business at the University of Trieste.  Within the fields of physics and engineering, her research expertise has centered around characterization of carbon-based materials using high energy photon, neutron, ion, and electron beams.  In business, Ashley has assisted multiple organisations in developing sustainablility strategies or commercialising new technologies, including graphene-based energy storage devices. She is well versed in working within interdisciplinary, multinational scientific collaborations and research centers in Australia, Europe, and the USA.

Daniel is the Director of CSIRO’s Hydrogen Energy Future Science Platform, an initiative driving new science and technology development in support of the emerging Australian hydrogen industry. Prior to this role, Daniel led CSIRO’s thermal and electrochemical research programs, and he continues to play a senior role in CSIRO’s gasification RD&D activities, where he represents Australia in IEA programs focussed on bioenergy. He has a background in environmental and industrial chemistry and has worked on projects ranging from lab-scale to industrial-scale, in Australia and internationally.

Prof. Dr. Christian Sattler studied chemistry at the University of Bonn, Germany. He is acting director of the German Aerospace Center’s Institute of Future Fuels and professor for solar fuel production at the Technical University of Dresden, Germany. He serves as vice president of the association Hydrogen Europe Research representing the European research institutions in the European Joint Undertaking for Fuel Cells and Hydrogen. He is the national representative to tasks of the IEA’s SolarPACES and Hydrogen Implementing Agreements and member of the ASME’s Clean Energy Technical Group.

Ellen B. Stechel is Co-Director, ASU LightWorks®; Professor of Practice, Molecular Sciences; and Senior Sustainability Scientist, Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Lab, and Fellow in the Institute for the Future of Innovation in Society. She has built and coordinated research programs at a national laboratory, in the automotive industry; at a U.S. government agency; and now in academia. Her current research focuses on materials and systems design for concentrating solar technologies for producing sustainable liquid hydrocarbons from carbon dioxide, hydrogen from advanced water splitting, clean water, renewable ammonia, and for thermochemical energy storage. Dr Stechel holds numerous positions of an advisory or editorial capacity, nationally and internationally, and has published over 100 peer reviewed articles. Recently a project team, in which she is a co-PI, won the U.S. Department of Energy 2021 R&D award for Hydrogen Production Technologies.

Chester Upham is an Assistant Professor in the Chemical & Biological Engineering department at the University of British Columbia. Prior to joining UBC, Dr Upham was a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University in the SUNCAT Center for Interfacial Science and Catalysis. He holds a PhD from the University of California Santa Barbara and a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from McGill University. 

Dr Upham’s research focuses on catalyst development for the sustainable production of fuels and chemicals. His current projects are related to hydrogen production, conversion of CO₂ into fuels, and decarbonisation of natural gas by developing new catalysts which incorporate separation and reaction. As an experimentalist, Dr. Upham builds custom reactors and uses in-situ spectroscopy and x-ray absorption spectroscopy in conjunction with kinetic and process modeling to understand mechanisms and enhance the impact of his work for use in commercial processes. 

Dr Upham has also spent time working at several start-up companies to develop and scale-up new catalytic processes. Most recently, he worked in multiple rolls with C-Zero to commercialize his PhD work to produce CO₂-free hydrogen using high temperature molten catalysts. He was also the Director of Development for Carbon Sciences from 2010-2013 and a Process Engineer at Kimberly-Clark. His work has resulted in 7 provisional patent applications, 18 publications including in Science, and in journals such as Nature Catalysis and ACS Catalysis and has been highlighted in Chemistry World and Nature Energy.

Dr Klaas van Alphen has got over 10 years of professional experience in managing large and complex programs and R&D assignments on behalf of the energy industry. He is now responsible for the delivery of the Future Fuels CRC’s research programs and management of resulting IP, with a strong focus on hydrogen technologies across the whole supply chain.

Dr van Alphen's work has informed national and international energy, innovation and climate change policy, resulted in new industry safety standards for gas infrastructure, delivered innovative carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, and led to the creation of globally recognised online intelligence databases.

Dr Julius von der Ohe completed his physics studies in 2018 with a PhD from the Georg-August University of Göttingen and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). As part of this work, he researched the development of catalysts for electrolysis and the production of solar fuels.

When Dr von der Ohe moved to NOW GmbH in 2018 as a program manager for international cooperation, he worked for the Federal Environment Ministry, among other things, analyzing the potential of, and defining guidelines / criteria for, hydrogen and fuel cell technology in emerging and developing countries. This included the development and support of networks and collaborations such as with the Society for International Cooperation (GIZ). He also represented the Federal Ministry of Economics in the international initiative Mission Innovation, which aims to initiate large-scale international hydrogen projects with Innovation Challenge 8 for hydrogen.

Since 2020, he is the team leader for the program international energy concepts responsible for the conception, design and implementation of the funding program for off-grid and decentralized power supply with hydrogen and fuel cell technology via the environmental technology export initiative of the German Federal Environment Ministry.

Dr Xiaoting Wang has been conducting research on the photovoltaic industry for BloombergNEF since 2012 and has published more than 200 insight notes. Her routine research scope covers shifts in crystalline silicon module technology, perovskites, innovation in project design, construction, and maintenance. Since 2019, Xiaoting’s research topics have included the technologies and economics of making hydrogen from renewables.

Before joining BloombergNEF, Xiaoting worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Center of Energy and Environmental Policy at the University of Delaware, following a five-year PhD program in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Delaware. During her academic research, Xiaoting published 19 articles in international journals and books, with the topics spanning a range of photovoltaic module research and development, performance measurement and modelling, and assessment of the value of high efficiency modules.