New Energy

R. A. Mashelkar

Chairman, New Energy Council; Former Director General of CSIR, India

Raghunath A. Mashelkar, the Chairman of RIC, is an eminent scientist and former President of Global Research Alliance. Earlier, he served as the Director General of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research for eleven years and is widely recognised for transforming the organisation.

A former President of Indian National Science Academy, Dr. Mashelkar is a prominent champion of the innovation movement in India. He has served as Chairman of India's National Innovation Foundation, as a member of the National Innovation Council, and as a member of the Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. He has been honoured with several awards from various institutions for his outstanding contribution in the field of science and technology and has received honorary doctorates from 47 universities.

He won the JRD Tata Corporate Leadership Award in 1998 and the Business Week (USA) ‘Stars of Asia’ award in 2005. He won three of India’s highest civilian awards from the President of India – the Padma Shri in 1991, the Padma Bhushan in 2000, and the Padma Vibhushan in 2014.

Dr. Mashelkar is also a former member of the Reliance Board.

Mukesh D. Ambani

Chairman and Managing Director, RIL

Mukesh D. Ambani is the Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries Ltd. He joined Reliance in 1981 and initiated the company’s backward integration journey – from textiles to polyester fibres, petrochemicals and petroleum refining, and finally, upstream into oil and gas exploration and production.

Mukesh Ambani led the creation of several new world-class manufacturing facilities involving diverse technologies at Reliance, which have boosted organisational capabilities and capacities manifold. He also led the creation of the world’s largest grassroots petroleum refinery at Jamnagar in India, which is often referred to as the ‘refining hub of the world’ today.

Ambani’s achievements have been acknowledged at national and international levels. In 2013, Forbes ranked him 38th in its annual list of the 'World's Most Powerful People' while the All India Management Association named him the ‘Entrepreneur of the Decade’. In 2010, he was awarded the Dean's Medal by University of Pennsylvania for his “visionary leadership in the application of engineering and technology for the betterment of mankind”.

In 2009, Harvard Business Review in its global ranking of the top 50 CEOs ranked him the fifth best-performing CEO. An extreme innovator, he is always on the lookout for businesses of the future that have the potential to change the game.

Alan Finkel

Former Chief Scientist of Australia; Chairman, Low Emissions Technology Investment Advisory Council, Australia

Alan Finkel is the former Chief Scientist of Australia. He has an extensive science background as an entrepreneur, engineer, neuroscientist and educator. Currently, he has two official roles that support Australia’s march towards lower emissions:

• Chair of the Low Emissions Technology Investment Advisory Council that advises the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction on the adoption of low emissions technologies
• Special Adviser to the Australian Government on Low Emissions Technologies

Finkel was awarded his PhD in electrical engineering from Monash University and worked as a postdoctoral research fellow in neuroscience at the Australian National University.

He has served as President of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering (ATSE) and as Chancellor of Monash University.

David Milstein

Professorial Chair of Organic Chemistry, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel

David Milstein was born in 1947 in Ulm, Germany, where his family took refuge after being displaced during the Holocaust. With his family, he immigrated to the newly founded state of Israel at the age of two.

He went on to complete his Bachelor of Science degree with distinction in 1968, Master of Science with distinction in 1969, and a Ph.D. Summa Cum Laude in 1976 under Prof. J. Blum from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.

Milstein conducted his post-doctoral research at Colorado State University with advisor Dr John Stille.

Currently, David Milstein is Founder and Head of the Kimmel Centre for Molecular Design and the Professorial Chair of Organic Chemistry at the Weizmann Institute of Science, a multidisciplinary basic research institution in the natural and exact sciences in Israel.

He is also presently a Full Professor at the Department of Organic Chemistry at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.

In 2007, Science magazine cited as one of ten “breakthroughs of the year” his group’s pioneering development of a ruthenium-based catalyst to convert starting compounds, called amines and alcohols, directly into another class of widely useful compounds, called amides, which play crucial roles in chemistry and biology. This catalyst, called the ‘Milstein catalyst’ is used today in labs around the world. Two of his catalysts are being marketed worldwide by Strem Chemicals, Inc.

His H Index is 91 (ISI); 97 (Google Scholar) and citations are 30,000 (ISI); 35,500 (Google Scholar).

Honours and Awards:

• David Milstein is a Foreign Member of Royal Society; a member of the US National Academy of Sciences; Israel National Academy of Sciences and Humanities; and the German National Academy of Sciences.
• He has received many honours including the Israel Prize (Israel’s highest honour); the Gold Medal of the Israel Chemical Society; the Israel Chemical Society Gold Medal; and the European Prize for Organometallic Chemistry.

Geoffrey Maitland

Professor of Energy Engineering, Imperial College, London

Geoffrey Maitland is the Professor of Energy Engineering at Imperial College, London, and a former President of the Institution of Chemical Engineers (2014-15).

His career has spanned academia and industry, with 20 years in Oil and Gas with Schlumberger and over 20 years at Imperial College London, first as a young lecturer from 1974 and then from 2005 in his current position.

He is also the Founding Director of the Qatar Carbonates and Carbon Storage Research Centre, a $70 million, 10-year academic-industry research programme based at Imperial College.

His current research is centred on how we can continue to use fossil fuels for most of this century without causing catastrophic climate change, particularly through carbon capture and storage (CCUS). He has chaired several CCUS public reports and been a member of the 2018 UK Government CCUS Cost Challenge Taskforce.

Maitland studied Chemistry at Oxford University, where he also obtained his doctorate in Physical Chemistry. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Energy Institute, and the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Henrik Stiesdal

Founder and CTO, Stiesdal, Denmark

Henrik Stiesdal is a pioneer of the modern wind industry. He built his first wind turbine in 1976, and in 1978, designed one of the first commercial turbines.

Stiesdal’s initial work in the late 1970s and early 1980s contributed significantly to the development of the simple and robust technologies of the ‘Danish Concept’.

Stiesdal has more than 175 inventions to his credit and has received more than 650 patents related to wind power technology.

He studied medicine, physics and biology at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense.

During his 40 years in the wind industry, he has worked with all aspects of turbine technology, including fundamental research, turbine design, manufacturing, sales, project implementation, service and quality management.

In 1990, he assumed overall responsibility for Vindeby Offshore Wind Farm, the world's first offshore wind farm.

Honours and Awards:

• Stiesdal has been named one of the most influential persons in the wind industry and has also received the German Renewables Award for Lifetime Achievements in Wind Energy.

Martin Green

Scientia Professor, University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia

Often referred to as the ‘father of photovoltaics’, Professor Martin Green is a world-leading specialist in both monocrystalline and polycrystalline silicon solar cells.

He is a Scientia Professor at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney and Director of the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics. He has been working at UNSW since 1974. He is also Research Director of Sydney-based CSG Solar Pty. Ltd., a company established to commercialise UNSW’s polycrystalline silicon thin-film on glass solar cell technology.

Green was born in Brisbane on July 20, 1948, and was educated at Brisbane State High School. He graduated from University of Queensland and completed his PhD on a Commonwealth Scholarship at McMaster University in Canada, where he specialised in solar energy.

Green has revolutionised the efficiency and costs of solar photovoltaics, making this the lowest cost option now for bulk electricity supply. His record-breaking achievements stretch across decades. Among his many breakthroughs, he invented the Passivated Emitter and Rear Contact (PERC) solar cell, which accounts for at least a quarter of the world's solar cell manufacturing capacity and has a rapidly increasing market share due to its greater efficiency over other types of cells. The PERC cells pioneered by UNSW now reflect 50% of world production.

Prof Green’s Google Scholar H index is 137 and he has 97,756 citations.

Honours and Awards:

• Fellow of the Royal Society of London, the Australian Academy of Science, the Australian Academy of Technological Science and Engineering, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE).
• Winner of the prestigious Japan Prize in 2021
• Karl Böer Solar Energy Medal of Merit Award from the University of Delaware in 2003
• Millennium Award from the World Renewable Congress in 2000.

Rachid Yazami

Founding Director and CTO, KVI Holdings, Singapore; Former Research Director, CNRS, France

Yazami is Founding Director and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at KVI Holdings, a start-up in Singapore dedicated to battery life and safety enhancement for mobile electronics, large energy storage, and electric vehicle applications.

Previously, he was Principal Scientist at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Yazami received his Doctor of Philosophy from the Centre National de la Recherché Scientifique (CNRS), France, in 1985, and a Masters in Engineering from the Institut Polytechnique de Grenoble, France, in 1978.

He is listed as inventor on more than 150 patents related to battery technology, including nano-Silicon- and nano-Germanium-based anodes for ultra-high-rate charge lithium batteries, the lithium-carbon fluoride battery for space and medical applications, and more recently, liquid anodes. He has co-authored more than 250 papers on batteries and their materials and systems.

In 1979–1980, Yazami invented the lithium graphite anode, now used in commercial Lithium-ion batteries, a product with over $100 billion/year in business value.

Honours and Awards:

• Yazami is a winner of the Draper Prize, the equivalent of a Nobel Prize for engineers.
• He has received scientific awards from NASA, NATO, International Battery Association (IBA), the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE).
• He also won the UAE’s prestigious Mohammed bin Rashid Medal for Scientific Distinguishment in the field of Sustainability Science.
• He is a member of the French Carbon Society (GFEC), The Electrochemical Society, The American Chemical Society, and the International Society of Electrochemistry.
• He has also been nominated for the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering (2013‐2015).

Robert Armstrong

Director, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Energy Initiative (MITEI), USA

Robert Armstrong is Director at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Energy Initiative (MITEI) and the Chevron Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Institute.

His research is focused on pathways to a low-carbon energy future. He was a member of MIT’s Future of Natural Gas and Future of Solar Energy study groups.

He advised the teams that developed MITEI’s most recent reports: The Future of Nuclear Energy in a Carbon-Constrained World (2018), and Insights into Future Mobility (2019). He is co-chairing the new MITEI study, The Future of Storage.

Honours and Awards:

• Armstrong has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering.
• He received the 2006 Bingham Medal from the Society of Rheology and the Warren K. Lewis Award and the Professional Progress Award in 1992, both from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.