About HydroGEN

Bryan Pivovar

Bryan Pivovar is a senior research fellow and manages the Electrochemical Engineering and Materials Chemistry Group in the Chemistry and Nanosciences 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.

Adam Weber

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.

Sean Bishop

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.

Qian Zhang

Qian is currently a computational research scientist at the EEST department in Idaho National Laboratory. She completed her Ph.D. in applied mathematics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, followed by appointment as a postdoctoral researcher and research associate in the Department of Engineering Science and Applied Mathematics and Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University. Her primary area of expertise is on applied mathematics and mesoscale computational materials science, which involves developing and studying models, (both theoretically and numerically) for problems in a variety of fields, including, energy storage and conversion system, nanomaterials and fluid dynamics. In particular, with phase field modeling, large scale numerical simulation and 3D tomography characterization data analysis, she studied degradation mechanisms of solid oxide electrolysis cells, including oxygen partial pressure distribution in the electrolyte, crack propagation at the interface of electrode and electrolyte and 3D microstructure evolutions in the electrode. In addition, she also studied mechanisms of core-shell nanowire growth and multiphase flow over solid surfaces during her postdoc and her Ph.D.

Brandon Wood

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.

Ned T. Stetson

Dr. Ned Stetson is the Manager for the Hydrogen Fuel Research and Development Program within the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Fuel Cell Technologies Office, within the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. He has over 25 years of experience in hydrogen storage materials and technology development. At the DOE he manages a comprehensive portfolio of research and development projects for hydrogen production and storage technologies that include: electrolysis; photoelectrochemical hydrogen production; thermochemical hydrogen production; novel hydrogen storage materials, including metal hydrides, chemical hydrogen storage materials, and high-surface area sorbents; complete storage system engineering; and advanced physical storage systems, including cryo-compressed and advanced composite cylinders.

Prior to joining DOE, Dr. Stetson researched complex hydrides in the group of Professor Klaus Yvon at the University of Geneva and worked for over 10 years at ECD-Ovonics, where he was involved with the development of novel hydrogen storage materials and hydride-based hydrogen storage systems as well as codes and standards development.

Dr. Stetson has a B.S. in chemistry from the University of Vermont and a Ph.D. in chemistry, specializing in inorganic, solid-state materials, from the University of California, Davis.