About the HydroGEN Consortium

Dr. Huyen Dinh is a Senior Scientist and Project Leader at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. She earned her bachelor's degree in applied chemistry and her doctorate in electrochemistry at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. Dinh has more than 15 years of experience in direct methanol, hydrogen polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM), and zinc/air fuel cells at national laboratories and in industry. Prior to joining NREL, she worked at three different fuel cell start-up companies and is now part of the leadership team responsible for building a hydrogen and fuel cell R&D program at NREL. Currently, Dr. Dinh is NREL's hydrogen production and delivery lead. Her research interests include fuel cell catalysis (PEMFCs, DMFCs); contaminants; and renewable hydrogen production, including renewable PEM electrolysis, photoelectrochemistry, fermentation of biomass and the photobiological approach to hydrogen production, and solar thermochemical hydrogen production.

Shaun Alia is a staff scientist in the Electrochemical Engineering and Materials Chemistry Group at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). He holds degrees in chemical engineering from the University of California, San Diego (B.S.), the University of Connecticut (M.S.), and the University of California, Riverside (Ph.D.). He has worked in several areas related to electrochemical energy conversion and storage, including proton and anion exchange membrane-based electrolyzers and fuel cells, direct methanol fuel cells, capacitors, and batteries. His current research involves understanding electrochemical and degradation processes, component development, and materials integration and optimization. Within the HydroGEN Energy Materials Network consortium, Dr. Alia has been involved in low-temperature electrolysis through NREL capabilities in materials development and ex situ and in situ characterization. He is further active within in situ durability, diagnostics, and accelerated stress test development for H2@Scale and H2NEW. He has published approximately 45 peer-reviewed publications.

Bryan Pivovar is a senior research fellow and manages the Electrochemical Engineering and Materials Chemistry Group in the Chemistry and Nanoscience Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, where he oversees 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 has co-chaired the Gordon Research Conference-Fuel Cells (2007) and will serve as the chair for the 3rd International Conference on Electrolysis in 2021. He was responsible for leading a multinational laboratory team pursuing "Hydrogen at Scale" investigating the energy system-wide benefits of increased hydrogen utilization. He has recently been named director for a major U.S. Department of Energy consortium (minimum of $50M over 5 years), H2NEW (Hydrogen from Next-generation Electrolyzers of Water), focused 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 Ph.D. 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 from The Electrochemical Society and has coauthored more than 150 papers with more than 10,000 citations in the general area of fuel cells and electrolysis.

Joel W. Ager III is a Senior Staff Scientist in the Materials Sciences Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and an Adjunct Full Professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department, UC Berkeley. He is a Principal Investigator in the Electronic Materials Program and in the Liquid Sunshine Alliance LiSA) at LBNL and in the Berkeley Educational Alliance for Research in Singapore (BEARS). He graduated from Harvard College in 1982 with an A.B in Chemistry and from the University of Colorado in 1986 with a PhD in Chemical Physics. After a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Heidelberg, he joined Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1989. His research interests include the discovery of new photoelectrochemical and electrochemical processes for solar to chemical energy conversion, fundamental electronic and transport properties of semiconducting materials, and the development of new types of transparent conductors. Professor Ager is a frequent invited speaker at international conferences and has published over 300 papers in refereed journals. His work is highly cited, with over 40,000 citations and an h-index of 107 (Google Scholar).

Adam Z. Weber is a Staff Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees from Tufts University and earned his Ph.D. in chemical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley modeling transport phenomena in fuel cells. His current research involves understanding and optimizing fuel cell performance and lifetime, including component and ionomer structure/function studies using advanced modeling and diagnostics, understanding flow batteries for grid-scale energy storage, as well as analysis of solar-fuel generators where he is a thrust coordinator at the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP). Dr. Weber has coauthored ~90 peer-reviewed articles and 10 book chapters on fuel cells, flow batteries, and related electrochemical devices, developed many widely used models for fuel cells and their components, and has been invited to present his work at various international and national meetings. He is also the recipient of a number of awards including the 2012 Supramaniam Srinivasan Young Investigator Award of the Energy Technology Division of the Electrochemical Society, a 2012 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the 2014 Charles W. Tobias Young Investigator Award of the Electrochemical Society, and a Kavli Fellow in 2014. Dr. Weber also sits on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Applied Electrochemistry and is past chair of the Energy Technology Division of the Electrochemical Society.

Dr. Anthony McDaniel is a Principal Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories and holds degrees in Chemical Engineering from the University of Colorado (Boulder, B.Sc.) and the University of California (Los Angeles, Ph.D.). His research experience spans a range of topical areas important to functional materials and their application to developing technologies for energy storage and conversion. He has authored more than 65 journal publications in the fields of thermochemical gas splitting, heterogeneous catalysis, solid state chemical sensing, electrochemistry, and atmospheric chemistry. His current research is focused on thermochemistry and electrochemistry of materials critical to developing sustainable energy technologies. These include complex oxides used in water and carbon dioxide gas splitting, solid oxide fuel cell cathodes, lithium ion batteries, and super ionic conductors. He currently leads programs at Sandia to develop pathways for production of renewable fuels using concentrated solar power.

Dr. Sean Bishop is a principal member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories. He earned his B.S. at New Mexico Tech and his Ph.D. at the University of Florida. He was a postdoc and research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and spent three years as a research associate professor in Kyushu University, Japan. He also worked at a solid oxide fuel cell startup company prior to joining Sandia. Sean has 18 years of experience characterizing the relationships between point defect chemistry, structure, and electrical, electrochemical, and mechanical properties of high temperature ion conducting thin films, bulk ceramics, and devices. His interests are in developing commercializable high temperature materials and processes for hydrogen production.

Tadashi Ogitsu is a Deputy Group Leader of the Quantum Simulation Group at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He earned B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Materials Science from the University of Tsukuba, Japan, then worked at the Institute for Solid State Physics, University of Tokyo, Japan, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he has developed computer software based on density functional theory that is highly optimized for massive parallel supercomputers. Taking full advantage of high performance computers and the software, he was engaged in broad range of research projects in the fields of condensed matter physics and materials science. After moving to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, he has been working on scientific problems that are relevant for energy storage and conversion technologies such as photoelectrochemical (PEC) hydrogen production. Recent projects include surface validation of III-V semiconductors for PEC devices and computational design and diagnostics of chalcopyrite-based thin film PEC device materials.

Dr. Brandon Wood is associate program lead for Hydrogen and Computational Energy Materials and deputy director of the Laboratory for Energy Applications for the Future (LEAF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He holds a B.S. degree from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in materials science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His primary research interests lie in the application of advanced ab initio and mesoscale simulation techniques to materials for energy storage, conversion, and delivery. Dr. Wood specializes in the use of high-performance computing and multiscale modeling to understand complex reactive interfaces in realistic device operating environments, including their impacts on performance and lifetime. Applications of interest include hydrogen production, hydrogen storage, solid-state batteries, and electrocatalysis. Dr. Wood also leads multiple projects focused on the development of new simulation approaches for improved predictions of materials degradation and corrosion. He has co-authored ~80 publications on diverse aspects of materials and interface modeling. In addition to his role in HydroGEN, Dr. Wood coordinates the crosscutting modeling and simulation activities for hydrogen storage within the DOE HyMARC consortium, as well as for high-temperature electrolyzer development within the DOE H2NEW consortium.

Dr. Anne Marie Esposito is a Technology Manager in the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office (HFTO) at the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. She joined HFTO in January 2022 after completing her PhD at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign studying catalysts for fuel cells. Dr. Esposito focuses primarily on low temperature electrolysis technologies. In her free time, she likes to cook and play board games!

Dr. William T. Gibbons is a Technology Development Manager in the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office (HFTO) at the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. He joined HFTO in January of 2020 after a decade on university campuses earning degrees in chemical engineering, teaching undergraduate material & energy balances and thermodynamics courses, and developing prototype fuel processing reactors for an early-stage solid oxide fuel cell startup. Dr. Gibbons focuses primarily on high temperature electrolysis technologies and low temperature fuel cell catalyst development.

James W. Vickers, Ph.D., is a Technology Manager within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office, where he primarily supports hydrogen production efforts. James came to DOE through the AAAS Science & Technology/Policy Fellowship and seeks to use his technical expertise to benefit the research efforts of the nation, increase our energy resilience, and work towards a sustainable future with equitable distribution. Above all, James enjoys commuting by and otherwise riding a bicycle.