Nigel Brandon is an electrochemical engineer who has spent his career working on the science, engineering and technology of electrochemical devices for the low-carbon energy transition, in particular fuel cells, flow batteries and electrolysers.

Nigel holds an engineering degree and PhD from Imperial College London, to which he returned as an academic in 1998 following a 14 year research career with BP and Rolls-Royce. He is a co-founder of both Ceres Power, a UK company developing fuel cell and electrolyser technology and RFC Power, a UK company developing a novel liquid-gas flow battery to store renewable energy.

Nigel was awarded the Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal in 2007 for his contribution to fuel-cell engineering, and made a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2008.  He was awarded an OBE in 2011 for his services to UK-China science in the field of energy and climate change. Most recently, Nigel was inducted into the United States National Academy of Engineering.

Dr Katy Milne is Programme Director for Hydrogen at the High Value Manufacturing Catapult and is also leading the seed activity for the Hydrogen Innovation Initiative – a collaboration to coordinate innovation priorities across the UK’s translational research base.

Katy has previously been Head of Industrial Strategy for the Aerospace Technology Institute’s FlyZero programme, Chief Engineer at the National Centre for Additive Manufacturing for a £14m programme for UK aerospace and established the Metrology & Non-destructive Testing group at the Manufacturing Technology Centre. She started her career at Rolls-Royce developing non-destructive testing solutions for advanced metal processes.

Andrew studied Automotive engineering at Loughborough University. His first interest in Fuel cells started when he completed a final year MEng project on the optimization of DMFC flow fields using metallic foams.

After graduating in 2020 he worked as a test engineer at Cummins Power Systems on Diesel and Natural gas engines. Andrew made the switch to Bramble energy in July2022 in order to pursue work with Hydrogen fuel cells to help power net zero.

At Bramble Andrew is a junior fuel cell stack engineer, his work is mainly focused on the development of the company’s liquid-cooled PCB fuel cell technology.

Sneh completed her PhD in Chemistry and MSc in Managing Environmental Change at the University of St Andrews. She has held postdoctoral research positions at Loughborough University looking at the movement of radionuclides in the geosphere, and the University of St Andrews, studying direct carbon fuel cells.

After her postdoctoral roles, Sneh worked as a business development manager focusing on Energy Conversion and Storage for the Energy Technology Partnership before commencing her current role as operations manager with the Hydrogen Accelerator.

The Hydrogen Accelerator will facilitate the realisation of Scotland’s hydrogen future by bringing together, public bodies, industry, research organisations, and higher and further education institutions.

Hungyen is a PhD graduate in Electronic Engineering from the University of Adelaide, Australia specialising in terahertz technologies. Following his PhD, he worked as a research associate at University of Cambridge for 2 years before taking up a Lectureship in Electronic Engineering at Lancaster University.

He is currently a Senior Lecturer with research interests in the terahertz sensing of energy storage and advanced materials. Hungyen is an IEEE Senior Member, EPSRC Peer Review College Member and is currently on a Royal Academy of Engineering Industrial Fellowship with LiNa Energy.

Per has over 17 years of experience from working on Solid Oxide Fuel & Electrolyser Cell technologies. The first decade was spent in Denmark pursuing new more efficient materials for as well as studying their behaviour using electrochemical techniques such as impedance spectroscopy. After joining Ceres eight years ago as technology manager for one of Ceres engineering departments, he returned to the world of science in 2019 to lead the development of Ceres electrolyser technology. He holds a MSc ChemEng from Lund University and PhD from Technical University of Denmark.

Professor Jianzhong Wu is Head of School of Engineering, Cardiff University, co-Director of the UK Energy Research Centre, and Co-Investigator of the Hi-ACT Hub. Professor Wu researches on Smart Grid and Multi-Vector Energy Systems (integrated energy infrastructure). He is one of the first group of researchers who initiated and established the research areas of multi-energy systems and Peer-to-Peer energy trading, which have become two important energy research focuses globally.

Prof Mays (cestjm@bath.ac.uk) is a Chartered Engineer (CEng), Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers (FIChemE) and Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) with over 25 years’ research experience at Bath in sustainable energy with a focus  since 2003 on materials discovery for high-capacity H₂ storage in nanoporous solids.  He has co-authored over 150 research outputs and has been an investigator on over £25M research grants including funding from the EPSRC and industry.  Prof Mays was Principal Investigator of the EPSRC Supergen UK-Sustainable Hydrogen Energy Consortium, UK-SHEC (2003-12) and is currently a Co-director of the EPSRC Supergen Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Research Hub, H2FC (2012-22).  He was recently appointed as EPSRC Co-ordinator for Research Challenges in Hydrogen and Alternative Liquid Fuels (UK-HyRES, https://ukhyres.co.uk). This aims to build a national research challanges hub to be based at Bath from April 2023.3.

Nilay Shah is a Professor of Process Systems Engineering at Imperial College. He is interested in the use of models and process systems engineering techniques to understand and design low carbon energy and industrial systems. He is a member of the UK Government Hydrogen Advisory Council and CTO of a synthetic fuels business.

Laura is the Innovation Lead for hydrogen within the Energy Team at Innovate UK. She is responsible for all things hydrogen, as well as delivery of phase 1.1 projects of the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund on behalf of BEIS.

Laura previously worked as the Senior Portfolio Manager for hydrogen, fuel cells, and industrial decarbonisation at EPSRC and was seconded into the Hydrogen Economy Team at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, where she worked on the R&I aspects of the hydrogen strategy.

Tom Cope is a Director in the Government & Infrastructure’s Energy Advisory team at Deloitte. He specialises in commercial and financial advisory, including: M&A; fund raising, commercial negotiations; as well as broader sector advisory.

Tom’s sector focus is Energy Transition and enabling technologies where he works with a range of organisations including start-ups, Government Departments and Investors.

Helen McColm works at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), job-sharing with Jo Huddleston. They have jointly headed a delivery team managing hydrogen-related Net Zero Innovation Portfolio funding since March 2020. Team projects include high-value demos by the likes of ITM and Vattenfall, feasibility studies for varied H2 production methods and for end to end integration of h2 generation with industrial end-usage, and standardisation work to aid domestic heating trials. Helen’s prior roles related to Brexit and research funding and better regulation.

We’re grateful to Simon for stepping in at the last minute to cover a panellist slot from a withdrawal due to unforeseen circumstances.

Robert has worked in the areas of renewable energies and energy efficiency since 1982, and in the field of hydrogen and fuel cells since 1997. He has participated in various European Commission projects and has authored and co-ordinated a number of European proposals.

Professor Steinberger-Wilckens has authored over 120 journal and proceedings papers, and contributed to several fuel cell and hydrogen books. He was Chairman of the 2008 World Solid Oxide Fuel Cells conference in Lucerne. He is Director of the University of Birmingham Doctoral Training Centre on Hydrogen and Fuel Cells.