Battery technology, fueling Aviation Electrification - Speakers
Meet our speakers
| Dr. Ajay Misra NASA Glenn Research Center Latest research and development on batteries | Dr. Ajay Misra serves as the Deputy Director of Research and Engineering at NASA's John H. Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. In this capacity, he shares the responsibility with the Director of Research and Engineering for leading Glenn's research and development competencies in propulsion, power, materials and structures for extreme environments, communications, and physical sciences. He has been actively engaged in development of technologies for electrified aircraft for the last several years. He has provided strong leadership for development of advanced battery technologies for electric aviation. Prior to his current position, Dr. Misra served in multiple capacities at NASA, which include Chief of the Materials and Structures Division, Acting Director of the Fundamental Aeronautics Program, and Program Executive for Radioisotope Power Systems Program. He received his Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and has authored four book chapters and more than sixty publications. Dr. Misra has received several prestigious awards, including the Presidential Rank Award for Meritorious Executives in 2015. |
| Brandon van Schaik Eindhoven University of Technology Electric aviation – a startup perspective | Brandon van Schaik is a student at the Eindhoven University of Technology who is strongly motivated by challenges. He has a strong interest for innovative projects with societal impacts such as developing electric aircrafts. Brandon van Schaik co-founded Falcon Electric Aviation in October 2018 to show that electric aviation is not only technically feasible but can also be a valid business case. He worked as team leader for almost three years and is currently an advisor of the corporate board. He has continued his endeavor into electric aviation by researching on sustainability in aviation in the Netherlands and the Dutch Caribbean. |
Matheu Parr Electrical power and propulsion | Matheu Parr is the Customer Business Director for Rolls-Royce Electrical. Rolls-Royce Electrical is a newly formed business within Rolls-Royce group focussed upon delivery of complete electrical propulsion systems to the general aerospace market such as Urban Air Mobility & Commuter aircraft. Matheu is also leading this highly specialised charge to build the world's fastest all-electric aircraft. With a technical background in electrical engineering as well as project management of he is responsible for the delivery of this high performance zero-emissions plane. Currently based in the UK he has 10+ year career in strategy development and R&D portfolio management across Nordics, US and Singapore. Previously undertaken roles supporting executive leadership teams in establishing, communicating and deploying an effective vision and strategy. |
| Pertti Kauranen Aalto University, Finland Battery Sustainability | Dr. Pertti Kauranen has a Doctor of Technology degree in engineering physics and electrochemistry from Helsinki University of Technology, completed in 1996. He has been working on development of materials, components, devices and applications for electrochemical power sources ever since. The devices comprise polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) and direct methanol fuels, PEM electrolyzes as well as Li-ion, redox flow and metal-air batteries. The industrial employers include a Finnish battery start-up and a major German chemical supplier, the academic ones VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and Aalto University. He is currently working as Academic Coordinator at Aalto University, Espoo, Finland. His duties comprise, among others, coordination of international cooperation within the Finnish Battery Metals Ecosystem BATCircle and acting as the Sherpa in the Raw Materials and Recycling working group of European Innovation and Technology Platform Batteries Europe. |
Peter Carlsson Battery technology and applications for aviation | Peter Carlsson is the CEO and founder of Northvolt. He left the position as CPO and Head of Supply Chain at Tesla Motors in the end of 2015 to become an entrepreneur, advisor and angel investor. In 2016 Peter founded Northvolt with the mission to build Europe's largest lithium-ion battery factory. Before joining Tesla, Peter was the CPO for NXP (former Philips Semiconductors) responsible for purchasing and outsourcing. Located in Singapore, he was country manager for Singapore, Malaysia and Philippines. Before starting at NXP, Peter was CPO at Sony Ericsson since 2005. Peter had a total of 13 years' experience from different roles with Ericsson and Sony Ericsson. He has a Master's degree with specialization in production and quality control at Luleå Technical University in Sweden. |
Richard Wang Battery technology and applications for aviation | Richard Wang is the Founder and CEO at Cuberg, a startup commercializing a next-generation lithium metal battery that delivers a generational improvement in battery performance. In 2021, Cuberg was acquired by Northvolt to commercialize this technology and serve as Northvolt's Advanced Technology Center in Silicon Valley. While at Cuberg, Richard raised $16M in private investment and grant funding from Northvolt, Boeing, the California Energy Commission, the Department of Energy, and others. Richard graduated with his PhD in materials science & engineering from Stanford in 2016, where his research with Prof. Yi Cui was supported by the NDSEG and NSF graduate research fellowships. He graduated with a BS in mechanical engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 2011 and was selected for the Forbes 30 Under 30 in Energy in 2017. |
Dr. Tine Tomažič 10+ years of Electric Flight | Dr. Tine Tomažič (male) was born in 1983 and received B.Sc. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from University of Ljubljana in 2007 and 2014 respectively. His work in systems automation and human machine interfaces ranges from autopilot technologies for unmanned aerial vehicles to electric and hybrid-electric propulsion systems. Tomažič was involved in development of world's first 2-seat and world's first electric 4-seat aircraft, the Taurus Electro and the Taurus G4. His current research is in the field of certifiable hybrid-electric propulsion systems and their intuitive user interfaces, where besides being involved in the development, Tomazic is active in the working group with ASTM F44.40 to rewrite current General Aviation design standards to allow proliferation of electric flight. He is also a member of SAE, EASA T4S Technology for Safety and a recognised global expert in the field of electric flight. He is the CTO of Pipistrel. |