Carolin Klose studied Physics at the University of Constance, Germany, and Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI, USA. She earned her diploma in 2013 and subsequently worked for two years as a Teach First Fellow at a high school in Hamburg. In 2015, she began researching novel membrane concepts for fuel cells and electrolyzers at the University of Freiburg within Dr. Simon Thiele’s Porous Media Group.
Two years later, Carolin joined Hahn-Schickard, becoming part of the newly established Electrochemical Energy Systems Division. She received her PhD from the University of Freiburg in 2020 and shortly after managed the "Electrochemical Energy Systems – Fundamentals" group. Since 2022, she has co-led the Electrochemical Energy Systems Division, alongside Andrea Münchinger and Severin Vierrath. Today, the division comprises over 40 employees and student researchers.
Her team focuses on the development and characterization of polymers, membranes, and membrane-electrode assemblies (MEA) for fuel cells and electrolyzers (AEM and PEM), electrochemical carbon capture, and redox flow batteries. For the past two years, she has also been lecturing the "Electrochemical Energy Application" course at the University of Freiburg.

Tom Smolinka has studied ‘Energy and Process Engineering’ at the Technical University of Berlin / Germany and got his diploma in 2000. Since then, he works at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE in Freiburg / Germany in the Division ‘Hydrogen Technologies’. Starting in the field of PEM fuel cells, he received his PhD degree from the University of Ulm in 2005. Subsequently, he managed for three years the Team ‘Electrolysis’ and built up in 2008 the Group ‘Alternative Hydrogen Production’ at the institute dealing among others with chemical hydrides, water electrolysis and redox flow batteries. In 2013 he established the Department ‘Electrolysis and Hydrogen Infrastructure’ which conducts today with its approximately 50 employees and students research and development mainly in the fields of membrane water electrolysis (PEM and AEM), solar hydrogen production and techno-economic analysis of power to gas systems and hydrogen infrastructure. He is engaged in several national and international activities on water electrolysis and holds a teaching position at the University of Freiburg in the master’s programme ‘Sustainable System Engineering’.

Bryan Pivovar is Senior Research Fellow at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, CO where he has overseen NREL’s electrolysis and fuel cell and materials R&D. He has been a pioneer in several areas of fuel cell development, taking on leadership roles and organizing workshops in the areas of subfreezing effects, alkaline membrane fuel cells (2006, 2011, 2016, and 2019), and renewable hydrogen at the gigaton scale (2019). He is Director for a major US Department of Energy Consortium (since October 2020), H2NEW (Hydrogen (H2) from Next-generation Electrolyzers of Water), which focuses on addressing components, materials integration, and manufacturing R&D to enable manufacturable electrolyzers that meet required cost, durability, and performance targets, simultaneously, in order to enable $2/kg hydrogen. He received his PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota and led fuel cell R&D at Los Alamos National Laboratory prior to joining NREL. He received the 2012 Tobias Young Investigator Award, the 2021 Energy Technology Division Research Award, and was elected Fellow 2023 of The Electrochemical Society and has coauthored over 150 papers with over 16,000 citations in the general area of fuel cells and electrolysis.

Prof Dmitri Bessarabov was recruited for the position from Canada in 2010. He obtained his doctoral degree from the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa in 1996. He worked in the Industrial R&D sectors in Canada, Vancouver, for Kvaerner Group, Ballard Power Systems and AFCC (Daimler and Ford JV). Current responsibilities include providing leadership in technology innovation, management and implementation of the National Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Programme (HySA), building effective teams with deep technical capabilities. Co-authored more than 195 publications, including books and book chapters and serves on boards of various scientific committees locally and internationally.
His area of expertise includes water electrolysis, fuel cells, membrane gas separation as well as hydrogen storage technologies. In 2022 was appointed as PI (Principal Investigator) for South Africa within the SA-Japan project for green H2 and ammonia project under SATREPS framework. Prof D Bessarabov was hosting the previous ICE 2023 conference in South Africa.

John Irvine CBE, FRSE, FRSC has made unique and world-leading contributions to the science of energy materials, especially fuel cell and energy conversion technologies. This research has ranged from detailed fundamental to strategic and applied science and has had major impact across academia, industry and government. Irvine’s science is highly interdisciplinary extending from chemistry and materials through physics, bioenergy, geoscience, engineering, economics and policy.
The quality and impact of Irvine’s research has been recognised by a number of national and international awards, including the honour of the Commander of the Order of the British Empire(CBE) in the Kings Birthday Honours List 2024, the Royal Society’s Hughes Medal in 2021, the Lord Kelvin Medal from the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2018, the Schönbeim gold medal from the European Fuel Cell Forum in 2016, the RSC Sustainable Energy Award in 2015, and earlier RSC recognition by being awarded the Bacon and Beilby awards.
Highlights of Irvine’s activities include discovery of the Emergent nanomaterials phenomenon, establishing the field of oxide fuel electrodes, delivering high performance direct carbon fuel cells and demonstration of significant hydride ion conductivity. Other important achievements relate to photocatalysis, lithium ion batteries, non-stoichiometric oxides, Structure/ Property/Function, catalysis and electrocatalysis and bioenergy.

Dr. Marcelo Carmo is Director of Technology at Nel Hydrogen, USA. From 2019 until 2021 he was acting-Director of the Institute of Energy and Climate Research - Electrochemical Process Engineering (IEK-14) in Germany. He was also Adjunct Professor at Queen’s University, Canada from 2020 until 2023. Marcelo has served as Operating Agent for the International Energy Agency from 2017 until 2023 for the TCP-AFC Electrolysis Annex 30. He was Head of the Electrochemistry-Electrolysis Department of IEK-14 in Julich in Germany from 2016 until 2019, and group leader from 2014 until 2016. Marcelo’s R&D focus is on electrolysis technology at different development stages and cell/stack sizes. This includes research and development on nanostructures and materials for alkaline electrolysis, PEM electrolysis and AEM electrolysis. The focus of all activities is on increasing efficiency, reducing costs and improving the long-term stability of the novel nanostructures, materials, thin layers and cell/stack components used in these devices.

Dr. Olga Marina is a chief scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Her current research projects focus on the advancement of high temperature steam electrolysis for hydrogen generation and on electrochemical upgrading of CO2 to high value fuels. Her research spans from fundamental studies of electrochemical reactions and degradation mechanisms to the design, manufacturing, testing, and benchmarking of solid oxide cells and stacks. She is the deputy director for high temperature electrolysis within the Department of Energy's H2NEW consortium, a collaboration among national laboratories and industry to improve electrolyzer efficiency, durability, and cost. She is the U.S. member representing the Generation IV International Forum VHTR Hydrogen Production Project Management Board. Recently, Dr. Marina joined the board of the International Society for Solid State Ionics. She also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of the Electrochemical Society. In 2021, Dr. Marina received an R&D Award at the Department of Energy HFTO Annual Merit Review.

Magnus Thomassen is the Chief Product Officer (CPO) and co-founder of Hystar, a Norwegian company specializing in high-efficiency PEM electrolysers for green hydrogen production. He is also the inventor of the company's proprietary electrolyser technology. Thomassen holds a PhD in electrochemistry from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and has over 20 years of experience in the fields of hydrogen, water electrolysis, and fuel cells. Prior to founding Hystar, he served as a senior scientist and research manager at SINTEF.
At Hystar, Thomassen is responsible for overseeing product development and aligning the company’s R&D efforts with market needs, helping drive innovation in hydrogen technology for sectors like heavy transportation and industry

P. Millet is an electrochemical engineer, University Professor in material science and physical-chemistry at the University of Paris-Saclay, France, where he directed research laboratories, most recently the “Laboratory for Research and Innovation in Electrochemistry for Energy applications", at the Institute of Molecular Chemistry and Material Science" (https://www.icmmo.universite-paris-saclay.fr/en/teams/eriee/). His research activities focus on the development of innovative materials, nanostructures and electrochemical reactors, mainly for water electrolysis, water photo-dissociation, carbon dioxide electro- and photo-reduction. He is also active in the field of hydrogen storage using hydride-forming materials, hydrogen electro-compression and hydrogen permeation across metallic membranes. He is an expert in electrochemical signal processing and non-harmonic impedance spectroscopy techniques. He also worked as innovation director at Elogen Co., the French manufacturer of PEM water electrolyzers, and now as scientific director in charge of the development of new components and electrochemical auditing techniques and as electrochemical expert for GTT Co.

Professor Jens Oluf Jensen has materials science and applied electrochemistry as main research fields. The approach is experimental, addressing technologies within energy conversion with a focus on hydrogen energy, high temperature PEM fuel cells and alkaline water electrolysis. The research on fuel cells and electrolyzers includes ion conducting membranes (acidic and alkaline), catalysts (noble metal based and noble metal free), electrode structures and cell testing with an emphasis on durability. He is the founder of the present conference series running since 2017. At DTU Energy, he teaches hydrogen energy and fuel cells as well as thermodynamics and is co-organizer of the annual Joint European Summer School in Greece. He is an editorial board member of several scientific journals including Electrocatalysis and until recently a board member of Hydrogen Denmark, the Danish national hydrogen association.