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.

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.

Dr. Philipp Matthes is a senior investment manager at Siemens Financial Services and has over 15 years of experience in the energy industry. With his background in different roles such as strategy, business development and M&A he is now promoting sustainable investments to drive the energy transition and industrial decarbonisation. He has established a successful cooperation between Siemens Financial Services and InnoEnergy and facilitated several co-investments. In addition, for the past 5 years he was managing director of WUN H2, one of the largest operating green hydrogen plants in Germany which he successfully drove through development and construction into operations. He has a diploma as well as a PhD in business administration from the University of Regensburg, Germany and a MBA from Murray State University, USA.

Mrs. Dr. Yun Luo is co-founder and CEO of ROSI, a French deeptech startup company leading the campaign of circular economy for photovoltaic industry. She holds a bachelor’s degree of physics from Fudan University in Shanghai (CN), a Diploma of Engineering from Ecole Polytechnique in Paris (FR), and a PhD degree in Microstructure Physics from Max-Planck-Institute in Germany. With full respect to science, technology, and industry, today Dr. Luo is leading ROSI team at worldwide forefront towards high value critical raw materials recycling and revalorization from and for photovoltaic industry, a key element for the successful relocalization and revival of European PV manufacturing.

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.

A graduate of the Faculty of Law and Administration of Warsaw University and joint Warsaw School of Economics’ and the Paris SciencesPo Programme of European Studies. Holds MBA diploma from WSE and University of Quebec at Montreal. Between 2000 and 2004 Mr. Lewenstein worked in the Polish public affairs sector, the Canadian Embassy in Warsaw and the Secretariat General of the European Commission. In 2004 he began his work for Polskie Górnictwo Naftowe i Gazownictwo S.A. in the field of European integration and the energy sector regulatory framework. In 2006 and early 2007 Mr. Lewenstein worked in the European Commission, in DG Information Society and Media. After returning to Poland, he became the Director of the Office of the Polish Electricity Association. In 2008 he rejoined PGNiG S.A., where he was responsible for planning of Group’s strategy, business expansion and development of the company’s power generation projects as the Director of Strategy Department. Since January 2016 he works for InnoEnergy as Innovation Officer and Thematic Field Leader of Energy for Circular Economy.