Professor Martin Freer
Professor Martin Freer is head of Nuclear Physics, Director of the Birmingham Energy Institute and the Birmingham Centre for Nuclear Education and Research at the University of Birmingham.
His main research area is the study of the structure of light nuclei, using nuclear reactions. This research is performed at international facilities worldwide. In addition, he is actively engaged in promoting research and educational programmes to support the UK’s investment in nuclear power generation. He received the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Prize, Humboldt Foundation, Germany in 2004 and the Rutherford Medal (IoP) in 2010.
Sir David King
Sir David King was the permanent Special Representative for Climate Change from September 2013 until March 2017. Sir David was previously the Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor from 2000 to 2007, during which time he raised awareness of the need for governments to act on climate change and was instrumental in creating the Energy Technologies Institute.
Pawanexh Kohli
Pawanexh Kohli leads National Centre for Cold-Chain Development, an autonomous advisory body of the Government of India. An industry leader, he is among the few who chose to shift energies into public service and to contribute to nation building efforts. As Chief Advisor on cold-chain and agri-logistics matters, he guides the associated government interventions and policies.
An ardent believer in innovation, he seeks those that are pragmatic and lead to environment friendly solutions. With focused approach on food losses he brought key conceptual changes to cold-chain development. India’s system guidelines on cold-chain infrastructure, were developed under his tutelage. He contributes to various national level councils and is a member of the Committee for Doubling Farmers Income and on the Empowered Steering Committee (ESC) for the Implementation of the Montreal Protocol.
Under his leadership, NCCD was presented India’s first “Agribusiness Leadership Award” in 2014. As a thought leader he counsels various committees of industry & government and contributes to international efforts for making the food supply chain more secure. Kohli continues to steer national level applied research in cold-chain and is an ardent believer in innovation and sustainable solutions for agriculture. His opinions stem from 3 decades of global multi-disciplinary experience across domains like shipping, business processes, food logistics systems and policy development.
Ian Crosby
Head, Energy Productivity and Cooling at Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL).
Since 2008, principle advisor on Sustainable Energy and Cleaner Production, International Finance Corporation (IFC), Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Ian developed IFC's Sustainable Energy Finance Program in Russia in 2002.
An experienced and senior development professional focused on all aspects of environmental and social sustainability. Developed new programs and managed a diverse portfolio of projects, including agribusiness, corporate governance, environmental & social standards, energy and resource efficiency and renewable energy.
Dr Tim Fox
Independent Consultant, Chair, IMechE Food & Drink Engineering Committee and Vice-Chair, IMechE Process Industries Division Board. Dr Fox is an internationally recognised expert on clean energy, sustainable food systems and climate change mitigation. He is an independent consultant and thought leader, as well as a Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor of Clean Energy and Public Engagement at the University of Exeter. Tim is a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), where he is Chair of the Food & Drink Engineering Committee and Vice-Chair of the Process Industries Division Board.
Dr Fox has a wide range of research, engineering and commercial experience gained across several industrial sectors, including energy, chemical processing and transport. He has worked in commercial enterprises, government agencies and educational institutions in the UK, Australia, Canada and The Netherlands, with global responsibilities in senior positions across R&D, marketing and commercial functions. Tim’s professional interests are in thought leadership, policy advocacy, public engagement, product and company commercialisation, business development and funding acquisition and he works at the intersection of science-technology-policy-business-communications, with a particular focus on developing economies. Tim was lead author on Institution’s 2014 report “A Tank of Cold: Cleantech Leapfrog To A More Food Secure World” in which he articulated together with Professor Toby Peters an initial conceptualisation of ‘Cold Economy’ thinking. He continues to work on the challenge of sustainable provision of energy for cooling provision.
Dr Lisa Kitinoja
Dr Lisa Kitinoja has been involved as a private consultant in international horticultural development work since the 1980s, and has been specialising in postharvest technology, food loss reduction and the extension of information on small-scale postharvest handling practices since 1992 as Principal Consultant of the firm Extension Systems International.
She is currently serving as Senior Technical Advisor for WFLO, as the lead of the HORT CRSP pilot project in East Africa (2010-13). Also for WFLO, in 2009-10, she led a BMGF funded Appropriate Postharvest Technology planning project for Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, and in 2007-08, she designed and implemented a series of Cold Chain Management Workshops for USTDA in India.
In 2011, Dr Kitinoja founded the non-profit The Postharvest Education Foundation, whose purpose is to provide motivation, training and mentoring for young postharvest professionals around the world. As a volunteer for the Foundation, she currently works with a wide range of clientele including trainers in NGOs, horticulture companies, extension workers, research scientists, postharvest professionals and graduate students in Africa, South Asia, SE Asia and the Middle East.
Ingo Wagner
Cooling EU Chair and Policy Manager at EHP.
Since joining EHP and DHC+ in January 2013, Ingo has divided his work between Euroheat & Power and the DHC+ Technology Platform. Starting as Project & Communication Officer he took on parts of EHP’s policy work quickly and subsequently adjusted to Policy & Project Officer. After the end of the IEE-projects he was entrusted with in 2015, he was promoted to Policy Manager in 2016.
For Euroheat & Power he deals with a variety policy fields mainly focusing on the wider efficiency sphere and questions around system integration, including buildings, industry and others. Ingo has the lead on building-related regulation and technical questions as well as on the matter of cooling. He coordinates the work of EHP’s working groups on Resource Efficiency (buildings, standardization, technical issues) and District Cooling. Ingo represents EHP in several committees and organisations such as the Coalition for Energy Saving’s advocacy working groups and the CEN TC371 WG1 & CEN TC228 WG4, and also coordinates the cross-sectoral forum on cooling (coolingEU).
For the DHC+ Technology Platform he is active in the collaboration with projects through participation in advisory boards but mainly focuses on matters in the field of research policy. Ingo is in charge of DHC+’s research advocacy, i.e. mainly the platform’s involvement in the SET-Plan process and H2020. Therefore, he coordinates the platform’s WG Research Policy and represents DHC+ in several SET-Plan governance structures such as the Governing Board of ETIP SNET and the Working Group on Efficiency in Industry. As manager in charge of DHC+’s external representation in the research policy field, Ingo was elected member of the Knowledge4Innovation management board and represents DHC+ in Eufores.
Professor Graeme Maidment
Professor of Air Conditioning and Refrigeration, London South Bank University. Graeme has 30 years of experience in refrigeration and air conditioning (RAC). He started his career as an apprentice with J & E Hall Ltd, and has since focused on improving the sustainability of RAC systems, technology and skills. Specialist areas include, refrigeration and air conditioning, cooling of the London Underground, ground source energy systems, refrigerant leakage and emissions. He leads LSBU's research in Refrigeration and Air Conditioning and teaches in the Department of Urban Engineering.
Toby Peters
Professor in Cold Economy at the University of Birmingham and a Senior Research
Fellow in Transformational Innovation for Sustainability at Heriot-Watt University
Toby is an award-winning technology developer and industrial academic with more than 14 years of experience in energy storage /energy systems incl. policy and regulatory environments; clean cooling/the “cold economy” and the environmental, societal and economic impacts of cooling; novel technologies for refrigeration and cooling and their development and system integration. Toby was the joint academic lead for the Doing Cold Smarter Policy Commission.
Building on work pioneering the development of the cold economy and clean cold technologies, he has now broadened this out to accelerate transformational innovation to market and improve innovation performance to help meet the world’s big social and economic challenges within the limits of our natural resources and time deadlines.
He has created and leads much of the new system-level approaches and research around delivering environmentally and economically sustainable cooling and power in both transport and the built environment, and the role “clean cold” has to play in emerging market transformation and sustainably addressing post-harvest food loss in developing economies. He is one of the named inventors of Liquid Air Energy Storage and the architect of the “Cold Economy”.
Dr Phil Greening
Associate Professor and Deputy Director of the Centre for Sustainable Road Freight
Dr Phil Greening, is an Associate Professor at Heriot Watt University and Deputy Director for the Centre of Sustainable Road Freight, his research interests include complexity, risk in supply chains, road freight, green logistics, and computer modelling of complex systems. Prior to joining academia Dr. Greening held the post of Senior Supply Chain Consultant with a global logistics company, responsible for the delivery of over 30 consultancy assignments.
Dr Greening joined Cranfield University in 2010 to help build a computer simulation of freight movements across the UK. Having completed this project in 2013 he joined the Centre for Sustainable Road Freight.
Dr Kamelia Atefi Monfared
Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Structural and Environmental Engineering at the University at Buffalo. She received her PhD, MA and Sc degrees from University of Waterloo (Canada). She has over ten years of research experience in constitutive, analytical, and numerical modelling in computational geomechanics. Her research contributes to development of resilient and sustainable energy storage/production technologies through a fundamental understanding of coupled geomechanical processes (fluid-mechanical-thermal-dynamics). Dr Atefi’s current research involves improvement of in situ soils/rocks for heat/cold storage aimed to develop an affordable energy storage technology for providing cheaper space heating and cooling; prediction of geo-environmental impacts of production/injection operations; enhancement of hydrocarbon, geothermal & aquifer storage recovery operations; and tunneling, including soil-structure interaction in rock and poor soils.
Stephen Gill
President of the Institute of Refrigeration, currently approximately half way through his three year term in the role. Steve moved into the industry after serving an engineering apprenticeship and has worked in it ever since gaining broad experience as a Company Owner, Board Director, Senior Manager, Sales and Design Engineer, Projects Manager, and as an Award Winning Consultant. He has extensive international experience, having worked in most European countries, China, and extensively in Southeast Asia. In addition to engineering qualifications, he has an MBA from Loughborough University and an LLM (Masters of Law) from DeMontfort University. He has become well known as an industry figure for his multi-award-winning refrigeration awareness campaign that took the form of memes which went viral a few years ago with over one million views, and more recently for an award winning industry wide mentoring scheme – cool mentoring. Stephen formed his own engineering consultancy practise – Energy Efficient Solutions – in 2003 to help end-users make informed decisions regarding the most suitable and energy efficient systems for them.
Professor Richard Williams
Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Heriot-Watt University, is an academic and entrepreneur working in mineral, energy storage systems and environmental technologies. An academician of the Royal Academy of Engineering and of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He holds an honorary professorship of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is Vice-President and a Fellow and Trustee of the Royal Academy of Engineering (UK) and was recognised as one on the UK’s top 20 nationally inspiring leaders of UK science and innovation by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, with the designation as a ‘RISE Fellow’. Professor Williams is also a visiting professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing), Southeast University (Nanjing) and Taylors University (Kuala Lumpur). He is a trustee of the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland and Advisory Board member of the Lloyds Register Foundation and the Converge Challenge. He has a strong interest in the effective translation of scientific and engineering knowledge to society through commercial and not-for-profit routes, and has worked extensively in developing relationships with academic and industrial partners in Europe, Middle East, Asia and Africa. He also has interests in public engagement projects across the arts-science-engineering domains.
Michael Ayres, Flexpower ltd
Michael has worked in a number of green technology start-ups delivering projects in the UK, US and China. This gave him the opportunity to contribute to building businesses from first concepts into organisations with professional management teams trialling their first products with customers working with strategic alliance partners. Along the way he built significant experience of operational and technology programme management, business and strategic alliance development and fund raising from grant and equity sources. His new business Flexible Power Systems delivers strategic impact for customers by combining energy systems thinking with cutting edge technologies in their operations.
Dr Robert Morgan
Dr Morgan is Deputy Head of the Advanced Engineering Centre and Director of the Advanced Propulsion Centre ICE Thermal Efficiency Spoke at the University of Brighton. He joined Brighton after eighteen years in industry, first with Ricardo then Ceres Power and finally as Chief Technical Officer at Highview Power Storage, joining Brighton in 2011. His career has focused on novel advanced propulsion technologies for transportation, fuel cells and energy storage. He completed his first degree in Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College in 1991 stayed on to study for a PhD in the high speed fracture mechanics of polyethylene, completing in 1994. He later studied for an MBA with the Open University, completing in 2011. Since joining Brighton, he has secured over £3M of funding from research councils and industrial collaborations. He has published 55 articles in conferences and peer-reviewed journals and is named on 14 patents. He is also the secretary of the Universities Internal Combustion Engine Group (UnICEG).
Dr Morgan’s current research is focused on thermal propulsion systems for road transport and distributed generation. The research seeks to take current clean internal combustion engine concepts and integrate novel methods of waste heat recovery to improve efficiency, towards 60% at the drive shaft. This includes combined waste heat recovery cycles, chemical looping and split cycle concepts. Dr Morgan also maintains an active interest in larger scale grid energy storage through his work with liquid air as an alternative storage media and energy vector. Current research is focused on the storage of thermal energy at low temperature in particular transient effects. His research is funded by EPSRC, H2020, Innovate UK and industry.
Professor Yulong Ding
Professor Ding holds the founding Chamberlain chair of Chemical Engineering and Highview-RAEng Chair of Cryogenic Energy Storage and is Director of the Birmingham Centre for Energy Storage at the University of Birmingham.He joined Birmingham in October 2013. Prior to his appointment at the University, he was Professor and Director of Institute of Particle Science & Engineering at the University of Leeds. He was the founding director of the joint Institute for Energy Storage between University of Leeds and Institute of Process Engineering of Chinese Academy of Sciences.
He has research interests in energy materials and energy processes and currently focusing on developing novel technologies for electrical and thermal energy storage at different scales. He has been a PI or Co-I of research projects with over £20M funding over the past 10 years. He has 13 patents, 400 papers with 180 in peer reviewed journals (H-Index of ~ 42). He was listed as top 1% highly cited researchers with consistent impact over 2002-2012 in the engineering category by Thomson Reuters. He also invented the liquid air energy storage technology and led the initial stage of development of the technology. His work on liquid air energy storage made a major contribution to the 2011 ‘The Engineer’ Energy & Environmental and Grand Prix awards, and 2012 Rushlight Energy Environmental and Power Generation and Transmission awards.
David Aitken, Carbon Trust
David leads the Carbon Trust’s incubation support to clean tech ventures. He has advised more than 50 clean tech ventures on how to grow. He also provides strategic advice to climate innovation centres internationally. David has over a decade of technology commercialisation and infrastructure project experience for clients including the UK Government, GE, and World Bank. Before joining the Carbon Trust, David worked in a start-up venture developing clean tech projects in developing countries. He has Law and Arts degrees from Canterbury University and an MSc in Environmental Change and Management from Oxford University.
Rosie Day
A Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Birmingham. She has interests in energy poverty, the constitution of energy demand, social justice in energy development, and in environmental justice more widely. She has been involved in a number of research projects related to these topics funded by UK research councils and European sources, and has supervised work on energy development in India, Bangladesh and Indonesia.
Professor Edward Owens
The Director of the Energy Academy at Heriot Watt University and the national Theme Coordinator for the Energy Technology Partnership in the field of Energy Utilization in Buildings. He has extensive research experience in demand management and has lead several international multi-partner research projects in Europe and Asia. His team recently won the Rushlight Awards for both Resource Innovation and Water Management for their work on the Innovate UK funded SCORRES project, which is combining energy demand management with precision irrigation systems in India. Eddie is a Professor of Sustainable Energy at Heriot Watt University and is interested in building the cold economy into the wider energy systems.
Rosa S. Rolle
Senior Agro-industry and Post-harvest Officer, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (FAO-RAP).
Rosa Rolle joined the FAO in 1995, where she worked at the organisation's headquarters in Rome in the field of agro-industries, agro-industrial biotechnology and post-harvest management. She joined FAO-RAP in January 2009, where she continues to work on agro-industry and post-harvest systems. She also serves as the coordinator of the Agriculture and Food Systems Group. Rosa's work is primarily focused on capacity building and the provision of technical and advisory support in the area of post-harvest including food packaging and processing, as well as support for agro-industrial policy and strategy development. She is very actively involved with the implementation of a number of field projects on post-production and value chain issues across Asia, and is the FAO-RAP focal point for the Save Food Asia-Pacific Campaign being implemented across Asia and the Pacific Region under the umbrella of the Global Save Food Programme. Rosa has authored/co-authored a number of research and technical papers, technical guides and training resource materials on post-harvest, processing, agro-industrial biotechnology and related issues. She holds MSc and PhD degrees in food science from Ohio State University (USA). She was recognised as an outstanding international alumna of that institution in 2003.
Guillermo Martinez, Araner
Commercial manager at Araner.
Industrial Engineer by Polytechnic University of Cartagena. - Sabic Innovative Plastics (2003) – Purchasing Department - APINA - Projects Department (2010-2012) - ARANER - Jordan Country Manager (2013-2014) - ARANER - Commercial Manager (2015-current) - Has participated in several Turbine Inlet Air Cooling Plants in the main stages of the project including the design, erection, start up and commissioning. - Has actively participated in the development of the Floating Temperature Concept for the TIAC Plant in Jebel Ali Power Station (DEWA). - He has been living for 3 years in different Middle East Countries checking the implementation and performance of TIAC plants and several engineered cooling plants in the region.
Jan Grimbrandt
Co-founder and CEO of BOSON ENERGY. Jan and BOSON are strong believers in the critical role of local customer-centric thermal cooling to build resilient energy systems – in both developing and developed markets. With rapid urbanisation and global waste volumes growing dramatically; clean and small-scale waste-to-energy is an important source of that thermal cooling and it can support a shift towards a sustainable IMBY economy ('In My Back Yard' as opposed to NIMBY – 'Not in My back Yard’). An experienced entrepreneur; Jan has already brought two industrial clean-tech start-ups through successful development, commercialisation, and industrial sales. Jan was co-founder and COO of Mobotec Europe AB (air pollution control and biomass conversion - acquired by Nalco) and co-founder and responsible for business development of Altoptronic AB (advanced tuneable diode laser analysers - acquired by Siemens AG).
Helge Schramm
Helge is an expert in life-cycle analysis of cooling and heating applications. For more than 25 years, he has worked within technical sales and product management for the fluid power market. Recently, he gained experience in optimizing the energy use of technical building systems as well as applying active and passive cooling solutions in mobile and stationary systems. In his role as Sustainability & LCA Expert in Danfoss A/S, he focuses on speeding up implementation of energy-efficient and sustainable solutions and has been representing Danfoss as part of the UNECE workforce on sustainable buildings.
He holds a Dipl.-Ing. (FH) in mechanical engineering from the West Coast University of Applied Sciences, Germany, and has complemented his experience with a Dipl.-Umweltwiss. in environmental sciences from the University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany.
Andrew Parker
Andrew Parker, EU GCC Clean Energy Technology Network. Mr. Parker has worked in the field of energy efficiency and renewable energy for over 30 years, specialising latterly in audits, energy planning, building energy efficiency, project appraisal and evaluation. He has undertaken energy projects in Russia, Moldova, Ukraine, India, Pakistan, Poland, and USA, generally serving as project manager or senior adviser. In addition, Mr. Parker has been responsible for project management duties on behalf of the European Commission in most member states of the European Union over the last 15 years. Wide experience in buildings energy efficiency, particularly in schools, hospitals and commercial buildings.
He was senior technical advisor for energy efficiency studies of commercial buildings in India on behalf of UNDP; has monitored energy efficiency projects in UK and elsewhere in Europe; responsible for auditing and training in building energy efficiency in Russia and Moldova. In the UK he assessed over 80 grant applications for energy saving projects under the UK Government Carbon Trust funding scheme.
Most projects have included some aspects of direct training, capacity development or building staff awareness of energy and related matters.
Judith Evans
Judith Evans is a Professor and head of Centre for Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Research (CARR) at London South Bank University (LSBU). She has 30 years’ experience of working on food refrigeration operations throughout the food cold chain. Her main areas of interest are related to efficiency and energy reduction as well as design and performance of refrigeration equipment. She is the coordinator of the CryoHub project, which deals with using liquid air for energy storage.
Professionally Judith is president of the IIR (International Institute of Refrigeration) C2 commission (food science and engineering), vice president of the CaRe (careers in refrigeration) working party and the cold chain in warmer climates working party. She is the UK, IOR representative to the IIR and an editor of the Journal of Food Engineering.
Scott Mac Meekin
Chief Executive Officer, Dearman. Has over 30 years of senior global experience in the development and commercialisation of emerging technologies and joined Dearman from Singapore-based Navis Capital Partners, South East Asia’s largest private equity fund. Prior to this, his recent roles include Chief Operating Officer at Tes-Envirocorp, where he transformed the business from a regional electronics waste management company into a global electronics services firm. Scott also holds the role of Non-Executive Director at TR Fastenings (LON:TRI), which supplies assembly solutions to market leaders in the automotive, electronic design and manufacturing sectors across 50 countries.
Shilpa Patel
Head of Finance Window at Kigali Cooling Efficiency Program.
Shilpa Patel is Director of Mission Investing at ClimateWorks Foundation. She works with partner foundations on the design and implementation of mission investing strategies and programs focused on climate change mitigation. Shilpa has a development banking, project finance and climate policy background. She started her career at the World Bank, where she worked on private sector development across a number of sectors, regions, and economies in transition, and headed the International Finance Corporation’s work on climate strategy and metrics, including understanding the climate change impacts of its activities, as well as the impacts of climate change on private business and IFC’s operations. She has also consulted with a number of organizations on climate finance. Shilpa holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and has taught courses on Project Finance at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business.
Ian Tansley
Ian has been working with renewable energy technologies for the past 30 years especially with a view to making the energy generated most effective. Working around the world, but especially in the poorer economies in Africa and Asia, Ian has developed a range of technologies and approaches that bring maximum human benefit from diverse and intermittent power sources. One such development is the invention of the Sure Chill refrigeration technology that earned Ian the Institute of Refrigeration’s Gold Medal in 2016. Ian is currently Chief Technical Officer at The Sure Chill Company and regularly lectures on renewable energy, global health and refrigeration.
Milind Atrey
Prof. Milind D. Atrey, graduated from VNIT, Nagpur in Mechanical department, obtained his PhD in Mechanical Engg from IIT Bombay in 1991. After working with Tata Research Development and Design Centre (TRDDC, Pune) for 2 years, he went on for his post-doctoral research in Germany for next 3 years. He returned to India in 1996 to join Atomic energy Department. He worked at Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (RRCAT), Indore, for 4 years to develop an indigenous Cryogenic system. In the year 2000, he joined Oxford instruments, UK, as Principal Engineer to carry out research related to MRI /NMR systems where he worked on to develop Cold Probe for electronics cooling, 4 K Pulse Tube Cryocooelrs and Cryogen free MRI Magnet.
In the year 2005, he joined IIT Bombay as Associate Professor, became professor in 2009; and went on to become Chair Professor in 2017. He got various awards namely, Dr Patwardhan Technology development award, Industrial Impact award and Excellence in Teaching award. He is the Fellow of Institute of Mechanical Engineers (FIMechE), Fellow of Indian Cryogenics Council (FICC) and has been recently invited to be the Founding Chair of the Process Industries Division to be established in India by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers UK. He has been entrusted with various projects related to Defense, Space (Cryogenic Engines) and Atomic Energy applications and has been on various committees such as DST, ISRO, BRNS for funds allotment and review of technologies. His current area of research are Cryogenic Heat Exchangers, Cryocoolers, Cryosurgery, Heat Pipe, Superconduting Devices etc.
In 2012, Prof Atrey became Professor-In-Charge of SINE which is IIT Bombay’s technology oriented business Incubation Centre and is considered as a Model Incubator in an Academic Institute in India. SINE has been responsible for generating 105 companies so far, out of which many have crossed 100 crores turnover. Recently, SINE has been approved as Centre for Excellence by GOI.
Ali Mohammed
Professor at Jimma University College of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, Ethiopia.
Department: Post-Harvest Management
Field of Specialization: Horticulture/Postharvest
Research Interests:
- Horticultural crops Production and Processing,
- Food Processing and packaging,
- Postharvest physiology and handling of Agricultural Products,
- Food product development,
- Food processing waste management and
- Coffee, Tea and Spices processing and value addition