(HyPT-3) Overview of Session 2A - Hydrogen from Natural Gas

Tuesday 12 September 2023 10:00am - 11:30am ACST (UTC+9:30)

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: Prof Murray Thomson (UToronto), A/Prof Simon Smart (University of Queensland), Dr Caleb Boyd (Molten), PANELLISTS Dr Enoch Dames (Monolith), Prof Hai Wang (Stanford), CHAIR Dr Zhiwei Sun (UoA)

SESSIONS AIMS TO:

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Prof Murray Thomson (UToronto)

Dr. Murray Thomson is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto. He is also cross-appointed with the Department of Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry. He received a BEng from McGill University (1986) and PhD from University of California, Berkeley (1994).

Professor Thomson is the Director of the Thomson Lab. He is on the organizing committee of the biennial International Sooting Flame Workshop, and the Board of Directors of the Canadian Section of the Combustion Institute. He is an Associate Editor of the journal Proceedings of the Combustion Institute.

Professor Thomson’s research is in the area of thermofluids with combustion/reactions with a focus on energy, biofuels, material synthesis, combustion modeling, and pollutant formation. He has supervised the thesis research of 99 graduate students and published 116 journal publications. He has several international collaborations (Singapore, France, USA) and industry collaborations. He is a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC) and the Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE).

A/Prof Simon Smart (University of Queensland)

Simon Smart is an Associate Professor in the School of Chemical Engineering and Director of the Dow Centre for Sustainable Engineering Innovation at The University of Queensland. His research is centred around the sustainable production and use of energy and chemicals, with a particular focus on enabling membrane and catalyst technology for blue hydrogen. Simon has published more than 100 peer-reviewed journal and 9 book chapters at a h-index of 32.

Dr Caleb Boyd (Molten)

Caleb is the co-founder and CTO of Molten Industries, an Oakland, California-based company developing novel hydrogen production technology to decarbonize heavy industry. Caleb has global experience including VC investing in climate tech at UVC Partners in Munich, Germany and building the one of the world’s most affordable air purifiers in Kolkata, India. Caleb studied Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, during which he took time off to work in product design at Apple and co-founded the UC Berkeley Hyperloop team.

Caleb received his PhD from Stanford University as an NSF graduate research fellow, where he split his time between Stanford and the National Renewable Energy Lab and developed some of the world’s highest efficiency perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells. Caleb has co-authored 15 peer-reviewed publications with over 2000 citations, including first author publications in Science and Joule. Caleb is a Breakthrough Energy Fellow and is a Forbes 30 under 30 in Energy. 

PANELLISTS

Dr Enoch Dames (Monolith)

Dr. Dames is the manager of Reactor R&D at Monolith and leads teams of engineers and scientists responsible for furthering technology, processes, and product offerings via plasma processing of hydrocarbons. 

He is based in California, USA.

Prof Hai Wang (Stanford)

Hai Wang is Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University. Prior to his appointment at Stanford, he was the Northrop Chair in Engineering and Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at USC.  He received his Ph.D. in Fuel Science from Penn State in 1992.  He was a Professional Research Staff at Princeton University from 1994 to 1996 before starting his faculty career at the University of Delaware.  He is best known for his work on the mechanisms of PAH and soot formation in combustion and development of chemical kinetic models for fuel combustion.  He has made contributions in the application of ab initio quantum chemistry and reaction rate theory in chemical kinetics. He developed stochastic methods for detailed modeling and uncertainty quantification. 

He contributed to the transport theories of nanoparticles and large molecules, atmospheric heterogeneous chemistry, and nanomaterials synthesis and its applications in solar cells and lithium ion batteries.  He was the recipient of the AIAA Propellant and Combustion Award in 2018, and the Humboldt Research Award in 2019.  He is a Fellow of ASME and an inaugural Fellow the Combustion Institute. He currently serves as the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Progress in Energy and Combustion Science and the Vice President (President-Elect) of the Combustion Institute.