Kerstin Jorna is a German national and a civil servant at the European Commission where she has held various positions, amongst others as Head of Cabinet of several Commissioners and different Director posts.

Mrs. Jorna is the Director-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs. Before, Mrs. Jorna was Deputy Director-General for Economic and Financial Affairs. Mrs. Jorna also held positions on the Board of the European Investment Bank, the European Investment Fund as well as the European Innovation Council Fund.

Former NASA astronaut and highly decorated combat fighter Ron Garan racked up 178 days in space and more than 71 million miles in 2,842 orbits between tours on the US Space Shuttle, Russian Soyuz spacecraft, and the International Space Station. During his time in space, Ron conducted four spacewalks in support of ISS construction and maintenance. Prior to those space journeys, he lived and conducted research on the bottom of the ocean in the world’s only undersea research lab, Aquarius.

Ron has been involved in many global mass collaboration and citizen science programs. He is also a serial entrepreneur and has founded multiple business enterprises/social-impact focused start-ups including Manna Energy Ltd. which is the first organization to successfully register a UN carbon credit for water treatment and has helped provide clean water to millions.

He is the author of the critically acclaimed books, The Orbital Perspective, the recently-released, Floating in Darkness – A Journey of Evolution, and the children’s book, Railroad to the Moon.

Ron is a sought after public speaker who has presented on the world stage at the UN,TED, the World Economic Forum, COP-26, and many other global venues.

Ron is celebrated not just for his research in space but also for his humanitarian contribution to life on Earth.

Dr. Mark Hartney has been involved in technology innovation throughout his career – in research and development roles, successful start up companies and as a federal program manager. Mark is based in Europe, supporting the BEV-E fund. Prior to joining Breakthrough, Mark served as the CTO and Applied Energy Division Director at SLAC, a DOE National Lab at Stanford University. Mark was also a Precourt Energy Scholar with the Stanford Precourt Energy Institute.

Prior to his roles at SLAC and Stanford, Mark served at the Department of Energy as one of the founding program directors of ARPA-E where he led efforts in carbon capture technology, (the IMPACCT program), as well as a number of other projects in wind technology, energy efficiency, biofuels and lighting.

Before starting ARPA-E, Mark served as the Chief Technical Officer for FlexTech, an industry-government partnership focused on R&D for flexible electronics. He has also served in business and technical management roles at two start-ups – Silicon Image and dpiX; and has held staff positions at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), MIT Lincoln Labs and AT&T Bell Labs.

Mark is a graduate of MIT (B.S. and M.S.) and earned his Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley, all in chemical engineering.

Sue has over 20 years’ experience in the offshore energy and engineering industries, including the wind, wave and tidal sector. Her previous roles included 11 years at OpenHydro, a global tidal technology developer, in senior management positions, including operations management, project development, policy advocacy and developing marine energy markets globally.

Sue’s early career, as a scientific and regulatory lead in the UK Government, helped deliver rounds I & II of the UKs offshore wind market, including revision of primary legislation, administering regulatory controls and advising UK Ministers on the earliest marine energy projects. Sue has developed marine energy projects in the USA, Canada, China, Japan and France. She was the UK Board member for the development of Brims Tidal Array, at 200MW the UKs largest proposed tidal energy project.

Sue is a Board member of Marine Energy Wales, and a Non-Executive Director of Marine Power Systems and Pembrokeshire Coastal Forum. Sue also chairs the UK Marine Energy Council, an industry association of over 50 organisations focussed on the delivery of marine energy in the UK. Previously a Board Member for Verdant Power Inc, Scottish Renewables and Renewables UK and served 10 years on the Council of the Marine Renewables Industry Association, Ireland. Over the past 15 years Sue has led and contributed to several international working groups, including SEA technical teams, and contributes to marine energy scientific research through the CASE Industry Advisory Board and Offshore Renewables Supergen Industry Advisory Board and support work to the US DOE Waterpower programme.  Sue was the recipient of the 2018 SUT Award for ‘Outstanding Contributions to Marine Energy’ and was awarded Ocean Energy Europe’s Vi Maris 2019 award for her work on progressing the marine energy sector. Sue has played a key role in driving marine technology development, both in the UK and internationally.  As a Director of Marine at Simply Blue Group, Sue brings her long experience in the marine energy sector, including tidal and wave project development, technology due diligence, project finance and significant networks to the group.

Naomi Lloyd is a TV presenter, journalist and media trainer. She presents Euronews flagship economics show Real Economy, made in partnership with the European Commission. She has previously worked for BBC, France 24, Reuters, ITN.

Lucas Arangüena is global head of Green Finance for Grupo Santander and global head of ESG for Santander CIB. Previously, he was head of Santander Corporate & Investment Banking (SCIB) for Continental Europe since May 2018 after being Chief Financial Officer of Santander Corporate & Investment Banking. He was also member of the Global Executive Committee, the Risk Admission Committee and the Group’s Liquidity Committee.

As CFO of the Division, Lucas was responsible for managing credit, liquidity and capital risk. Lucas looked after the Active Credit Portfolio Management Unit (ACPM), Capital unit, XVA desk and Financial Control.

Lucas joined Santander Corporate & Investment Banking Division in 2010 as global head of Strategic Planning. Subsequently he was appointed head of Global Transaction Banking in the UK. Prior to joining Santander, Lucas was an Associate Principal at McKinsey & Co in the Corporate Finance practice, where he focused primarily on Corporate & Investment Banking and M&A for large blue chips and private equity investors. He also worked for Goldman Sachs.

Lucas holds an MBA from MIT Sloan, an MSc from the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées and an MSc from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.

MSc Civil Engineering Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands MBA Manchester Business School, UK
Corporate Venture Capital and Business Partnerships Leading the SV implementation team (2021 present)
Leadership Team and community leadership experience in an offshore operational and a project maturation environment utilizing Lean and CI work practices.
New Technology Implementation Deployed novel technology, solutions and business models in O&G operations globally (2001 2021)
Project Management Leading development & execution of complex O&G projects spanning different locations across the globe (2005 2021)
Operations exp Design, optimization and execution of well and facility performance in Europe, The Middle East, Africa and Asia (2005 2021)

Olivier Sala was appointed the Group Vice President of Research & Innovation at ENGIE in July 2021. Passionate about energy & carbon transition challenges and how technologies can contribute, Olivier is an experienced VP with a demonstrated history of working in the Energy and Services industry.

In 1993, Olivier Sala graduated from the University of Technology in Compiègne with a Master’s in Mechanical Engineering, and in 1996 from ESSEC. He began his career at Air Liquide before moving into consulting at A.T. Kearney, followed by the Boston Consulting Group.

ENGIE is a leading world group that provides low-carbon energy, and aims to meet the challenges of climate change by achieving Net Zero Carbon by 2045. Guided by its objective statement, ENGIE reconciles economic performance with a positive impact on people and the planet, using its expertise in four core businesses: renewable energy, energy solutions, networks, thermal generation and energy supply.

Gøran Bye is the CEO of Norwegian Crystals, a company that uses hydro power to make ultra low-carbon monocrystalline silicon ingots, brick and wafers for PV. Norwegian Crystals is currently raising the funding for a substantial expansion of its production capacity to support the renaissance of European PV-manufacturing.

Gøran has more than 20 years experience from PV-manufacturing. His former positions include CPO of Qatar Solar Technologies; President & CEO of LDK Silicon and Chemical Technology Co, (China); Director of Industries at Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company “MASDAR”; and President & CEO of REC Silicon (USA).

Tim is one of the four co-founders of Hardt Hyperloop. Hardt has realized Europe’s first operational hyperloop and is the leading company in Europe for the development, implementation and standardization of the hyperloop. Tim has a background in mechanical engineering at the Delft University of Technology, where he built record-breaking electric race cars among other things. Prior to Hardt, Tim was the team captain of the Delft Hyperloop team, which won Elon Musk’s hyperloop competition. It is Tim’s passion to work with an amazing team with loads of ambition to do the extraordinary.

Tech-entrepreneur (+5 companies) with start-up, international growth, IPO, and trade sales experience. 30 years of technology-driven business development with experience from multi-discipline solutions in industries such as energy, waste, pulp and paper, mining, aerospace, IoT communication.

Dr Melanie Windridge is a specialist in fusion energy who helps people see the value and opportunities of fusion to society and their businesses. She is a plasma physicist, speaker, writer… with a taste for adventure. Melanie has a PhD in plasma physics (fusion energy) from Imperial College London, is Communications Consultant for privately-funded fusion company Tokamak Energy and Founder of Fusion Energy Insights. She was previously UK Director of the Fusion Industry Association. Melanie is the author of Aurora: In Search of the Northern Lights and Star Chambers: the race for fusion power. She hosts a blog, Science at Extremes, on her website and writes for Forbes online. 

www.melaniewindridge.co.uk 

www.fusionenergyinsights.com 

Diego Pavía is a serial entrepreneur, having created seven companies in his lifetime. His main endeavour is to innovate, create – and implement operationally – all with the objective of creating value.

He is an electrical engineer from the Polytechnic University of Madrid, with a major in electronics and automation. In 1988, he was as co-founder and CEO of a start-up, Knowledge Engineering, dealing with industrial controls systems using artificial intelligence and neural networks. Three years later he joined Sema Group, and started a long career with private companies. In SchlumbergerSema, Diego headed multicultural working groups all over the world in the field of energy, with revenues of $650M. Between 2002 and 2010, Diego was the CEO of Atos Origin, a leading international IT service provider, where he was responsible for Spain and South America, about 9,000 employees, and an annual turnover of €450 million.

Since 2010 and under Diego’s leadership, EIT InnoEnergy has become the largest global organisation supporting innovation and entrepreneurship in sustainable energy, having directly deployed €650M to nearly 500 innovative products and services.

Besides her academic career in the fields of knowledge management, collaborative innovation and entrepreneurship, Elena Bou developed her professional career in the field of management consulting in both private and public companies. In 2010 she co-founded EIT InnoEnergy, the innovation engine for sustainable energy across Europe supported by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology.

She contributed to create InnoEnergy’s trusted innovation ecosystem which operates in more than 26 countries. In Elena’s Innovation Director role, she led the development of major efforts in creating and accelerating new start-ups and scale-ups in the energy field, including the investment process in such ventures. As a result, the company has now supported nearly 500 start-ups, including two unicorns.

Minesto is a leading technology developer in the ocean energy sector with operations in Sweden, UK, Taiwan and the Faroe Islands. Minesto has raised around 100 M EUR to commercialize its unique technology. In 2016 Martin Edlund took on the role as CEO of Minesto following the IPO on NASDAQ First North in Stockholm. Martin is a board member of the Marine Energy Council, UK. He takes great interest in the role of ocean energy in the Net Zero transition of the global energy system.

Dr. Martin Edlund has for the last 25 years combined management consulting, board representations and strategy research collaboration with world-class technology companies such as ABB, GE, LM Ericsson and SKF. His main focus is on turning technology into business. Martin has a Ph.D. in Industrial Economics and Organization with focus on Innovation Management and holds an M.Sc. in Engineering Physics from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden.

António Coutinho is the CEO of EDP Inovação, where he heads the innovation platform of EDP to position the group in the energy transition challenge.

Prior to EDP Inovação, António has served several positions and key functions within the EDP Group since joining in 2003. Between 2010 and 2021, he was Executive Board Member of EDP Comercial, responsible for energy retail and energy services for B2B until 2018 and the New Downstream after. He served as Chief Energy Management Officer for EDP Renewables North America between 2007 and 2010. Prior to EDP Renewables, he was the Head of Energy Planning at EDP SA.

Prior of EDP, António was Principal at The Boston Consulting Group. António is a civil engineer and holds a MSc on Operational Research, both by Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal.

Mari Vassdokken Sigstad is a Project Manager in Rystad Energy’s consulting business with wide experience in topics such as energy storage, batteries, and power system dynamics. She has worked on a variety of projects related to the offshore vessel space, oil and gas emissions strategies, and the oil and gas supplier industry. Mari has worked with market assessments, corporate strategy, valuations, and IPO support for large industrial players, investors, government institutions, and E&Ps. She holds an MSc in Marine Technology from the Norwegian University of Science & Technology, with a specialty in Marine Hydrodynamics.

Wiebrand Kout founded Elestor in 2014 to fill the need for large scale, ultra-low-cost electricity storage and is responsible for the development of the company’s core technology, intellectual property, cost modelling and product planning.

In his career, Wiebrand has pioneered three hydrogen electrochemical systems: the PEM fuel cell, the electrochemical hydrogen compressor and the Elestor HBr flow battery. Prior to founding Elestor, he served as COO and lead designer at HyET, where he co-developed the first electrochemical hydrogen compressor capable of reaching 1,000 Bar in 2013. He started his career in 1999 at NedStack Fuel Cell Technology, where he headed the mechanical design of Europe’s first series produced PEM fuel cell stack.

Anna is the CMO and co-founder of Mine Storage. Mine Storage develops and operates grid-scale energy storages in used underground mines. There is a growing global demand for energy storage driven by the transition from fossil-based energy production to weather dependent power generation. By developing mine storages that will help balance the grid, Mine Storage can be a true enabler of the green energy transition. Anna is a passionate serial-entrepreneur and investor with experience of scaling several technology companies. She is the co-founder of Venizum with many global companies as customers. She also co-founded Vendemore which was the first account-based marketing company in the world with more than 100 Fortune-500 companies as clients.

Trained in France and in the UK as a mechanical engineer, Jean-Pierre Riche started his career in the steel industry as manager and later director in ARCELOR MITTAL (for 8 years).

For the last 23 years, he has managed business units and companies in engineering and consultancy: innovation, R&D, IT , cost reduction and finally energy. He has founded and managed Okavango-energy from 2009 till 2016, a leading French consultancy company in energy efficiency in the industrial sector and has become a recognised expert in energy performance.

Founder of Green Future Lab, a think thank for energy transition and co-founder of the Orygeen Institute, a non-profit organisation dedicated to help and motivate top managers to set ambitious energy efficiency objectives to their organisations. Currently founder and president of pHYnix, one of the first independent producers of green hydrogen in Europe.

Rob is the Development Manager of New energy markets, including hydrogen, CO2 and waste to renewable energy, at VTTI. He started his career as a researcher for the Dutch ministry of economic affairs with a focus on ethanol and later became a co-founder of Ethanol statistics, a market research and business information publisher. Following that he went to ExxonMobil where he was responsible for analysing the base oil (lubricant feedstock) supply network in Europe.  After a time as a sales analyst for chemicals at VOPAK in Belgium, Rob moved into business development for Vopak Netherlands being responsible for the sales, business development and account management of oil tank storage capacity at the largest oil terminal in Europe.

In 2016 he joined ATPC – a VTTI company and became commercial manager, responsible for a 970.000 m3 oil products & LPG storage facility and 25.000 bbl/d refinery. He was actively involved in the strategic repositioning of the terminal in the ARA market and the development of subsequent investments before becoming development manager.

Camel Makhloufi has held several positions in the energy sector mostly dedicated to the decarbonization of hard-to-abate industries. In his previous role; he was co-managing, within the french utility company ENGIE,  a group key program dedicated to electrofuels and e-molecules (e.g green ammonia, methanol, aviation fuel and so on). He has also been working in the last 5 years within ENGIE R&D hydrogen team as a key-expert ; leading the R&D pillar related to power-to-X, hydrogen transport and storage. He acted as one of ENGIE representatives within hydrogen Europe and IEA tasks and has been acting as coordinator of european and national projects.

Camel holds a PhD in process engineering from the University of Lorraine related to CO2 capture from thermal power plants.

Alvaro Guzmán is Key Account Manager at FlexiDAO, a global provider of cutting-edge energy traceability software solutions to help companies adopt carbon-aware energy procurement strategies, such as 24/7 Carbon-free Electricity and Carbon-optimised Procurement. Its services help companies to secure corporate climate advocacy leadership while shielding themselves against carbon risk and gaining ESG attractiveness.

Daniel has been spending 27 years in the energy management world, accumulating a rich experience from motor management to electrical distribution, with his career split between 14 years in the R&D and industrial domains and 12 years focusing on global offer management. Throughout his journey at Schneider Electric, Daniel spent 3 years in Japan being part of the first joint-venture between Schneider Electric and Toshiba for low voltage variable speed drives. From 2009 he also spent 4 years in India managing Schneider Electric Global Technology Center in Bangalore. Daniel holds a Master of Science and an Engineering Degree in mechatronics.

Until September 2021, Daniel has been leading the Medium Voltage Switchgear line of business of Schneider Electric. Since 2021, Daniel is the Chief Technology Officer of the Energy Management Business, driving the innovation and technology dynamic across our various businesses to tackle our key challenges : resilience, sustainability and talents.

Married and father of 2 sons, Daniel is currently living in Grenoble (in the French Alps) and is keen on cycling and military history of the 20th century

Dr. Susara van den Heever leads Google Cloud’s Customer Engineering Practice EMEA, where she gets to live her passion for using Data, AI, and Cloud Technology to make the world a better place.  She builds, leads & grows teams that help people and businesses be more efficient, save time, manage resources better, or make better environmental choices.  Susara holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, where she pioneered models and methods for strategic, tactical, and operational planning in the hydrocarbon industry.  While her career has spanned many roles and industries, a highlight was leading the Constrained Resource and Environmental Analytics team at IBM Smarter Cities Technology Center, where she led initiatives in sustainable water management, aquaculture, and sustainable energy management, with an emphasis on dealing with uncertainties such as market fluctuations, population growth, and weather.  In addition to her core passion of data, AI, and decision systems, her Google Cloud team also covers the underlying technologies that make those systems possible, such as security, infrastructure, and application modernization, to bring exceptional value to enterprises on their data and cloud journeys.

Prof.Dr.ir. Gielen has extensive experience with R&D in the telecommunication and software technology sector as well as in raising venture capital, university-industry collaborative research and spin-off creation.

Prof.Dr.ir. Gielen held a number of technical and management positions in the software industry. He started as a software architect with AT&T Bell Labs in the USA and was director of software technology at Alcatel.

In 1998 he joined Tellium, a US based start-up company in optical network technology, as the VP of Software Engineering. Tellium had a successful IPO on NASDAQ in 2001. He then returned to Europe in 2001 as the CEO for Tellium EMEA.

From 2010 to 2015 he was the Director of the Incubation & Entrepreneurship at iMinds, the leading digital incubator and business accelerator in Flanders. The iStart incubation programme of iMinds was ranked number 4 in UBI’s global ranking of university accelerators in 2015.

Prof.Dr.ir. Gielen was head of the EIT Digital Professional School with the ambition to lead the innovation of professional development and executive education for companies, organisations and individuals going through a digital transformation.

Since 2017 he has been the Education Director at InnoEnergy.

Currently he is also a professor of software technology entrepreneurship at the University of Ghent.

Lee joined Galp in October 2021 as Director of Strategy and Sustainability where he will play a key role in defining & driving Galps pathway through the Energy Transition. He has 18 years energy industry experience including 15 years at Royal Dutch Shell where he worked across the globe in locations such as Qatar, USA, Australia, Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway. Prior to joining Galp, Lee held a range of senior roles at Shell including the Group Head of Investment Appraisal, VP Upstream Digital Transformation and the Country Chair of Denmark, Greenland and Iceland. Lee holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BSc in Chemical Engineering from Qatar University.

Răzvan-Eugen Nicolescu is a recognized specialist in the energy field, with a solid experience in both the private and public sectors.

He was Director for Regulatory Affairs of OMV Petrom S.A, Chairman and Vice-chairman of the European Union Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) between 2010-2016, as well as Minister of Energy in Romania in 2014. Between February 2015 – April 2021, he has been Partner for Energy Resources and Sustainability Industry Leader of Deloitte Central Europe. Since April 2021, he has been a member of the Supervisory Board of OMV Petrom. He is also a member of the Governing Board of the European Institute for Innovation and Technology

François Gaudet heads the Thematic Impact Finance Operations unit in the Infrastructure division of the Equity, New Products and Special Transactions department of the European Investment Bank.  His work focuses on the development and deployment of innovative financing solutions for the infrastructure space with an emphasis on the energy, transport, bio and circular economy sectors.

Between 2011 and 2014, he was Principal Advisor at the European PPP Expertise Centre also part of the EIB where he advised public authorities on different aspects of PPP infrastructure projects and policies.

Before joining EPEC, he was a Senior Banker in the municipal and environmental infrastructure team of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in London and Ukraine where he focused on private sector transactions, both equity and debt.  Prior to joining EBRD, Mr Gaudet worked at JP Morgan Chase Private Equity Asia where he was part of a management team restructuring an investment in the telecom sector in Asia.  Mr. Gaudet has a wide experience in mergers and acquisitions, structured finance and regulated industries acquired both through his former legal practice and banking work.

Mr Gaudet is a Canadian and British national and holds a degree in law (cum laude) from the University of Ottawa, Canada and a diploma in financial management (DipFM) from the ACCA, UK.

Jacob Ruiter has held various positions in a wide variety of companies all related to energy. In his previous role he was the Director, Country Manager Energy Advisory of Benelux at DNV GL, where he was responsible for energy and renewables advisory activities in the Benelux, Africa and Middle East.

Previous to that, he worked for Dutch Utilities company, Essent, where he had a number of roles including Managing Director for metering data, Managing Director for local energy solutions and Managing Director for B2B.

Jacob began his career with oilfield service company, Schlumberger, as a wire-line field engineer. It was from there that he moved onto more commercial roles, starting with the position of Regional Manager Europe for drill pipe manufacturer Grant Prideco.

Jacob holds an M.Sc. in Mining Engineering from the Delft University of Technology and an MBA from the Rotterdam School of Management.

Diogo is heading Hydrogen Business Development at Galp since June 2021, pushing forward for a strong energy transition commitment through the development of opportunities and new projects in the green hydrogen and synthetic fuels value chain.

Diogo has a Master in Chemical Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico, in Lisbon, and has 20 years of experience at Galp within the energy ecosystem, taking different roles on the oil value chain and corporate strategy, and helping to promote a balanced yet material strategical shift to a low-carbon energy paradigm.

MSc Industrial Engineer from the Polytechnic University of Valencia. Specialized in new technologies in the energy transition and mobility sector. Luis has more than 8 years of experience in the energy and mobility sector with focus on innovation, new business models and new technologies. After several years rolling out innovative projects at NTT Data Group, currently he is entrusted as Chief Operating Officer at Zeleros Hyperloop, being in charge of supporting in the company’s vision and strategy as well as dealing with the business development area and fundraising.