Our people
Executive team
Professor Ying (Ian) Chen
Hub Director
Professor Ying (Ian) Chen is the Director of the SafeREnergy Hub, responsible for the overall leadership and strategic guidance of the Hub. He guides the research direction and oversees the performance of the Hub. Professor Chen is also the Chair in Nanotechnology within the Institute for Frontier Materials at Deakin University, leading a world-renowned team in nanomaterials production and commercialisation.
Professor Zaiping Guo
Hub Deputy Director
Professor Zaiping Guo is the Deputy Director of the SafeREnergy Hub, supporting the Director and Executive Team. She is responsible for overseeing the scientific program. Professor Guo is also an Australian Laureate Fellow at the University of Adelaide, focussing on developing the next generation of high performance batteries to power electric cars and a green energy grid for a more sustainable future.
Professor Ian Gentle
Associate Director & Node Leader (University of Queensland)
Professor Ian Gentle joined the University of Queensland in 1993 following postdoctoral positions at the Research School of Chemistry, ANU and the University of New England. During 2008-2010 he was seconded to the Australian Synchrotron, Clayton, Victoria as Head of Science, returning to UQ in 2011. In 2013 he was appointed Associate Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Science, whilst continuing to lead a group in SCMB. In 2015 he was appointed Deputy Executive Dean, Faculty of Science.His team are developing new materials for use as cathodes in high-energy rechargeable batteries, particularly lithium sulfur batteries, and supercapacitors. Materials developed so far show potential increases in energy density of 3-5x that of lithium ion batteries. In this work, funded by industry and State Government, they are working to continue increasing the capacity of Li-S batteries in a new purpose-built facility.
Matthew Nye
Hub Manager
Matthew Nye
Hub Manager
Matthew Nye is responsible for managing the day-to-day operations of the Hub and acts as the bridge between the projects and the industry partners. He comes to the Hub with over 10 years of Higher Education experience, including management of HDR admission and scholarship processes.
Node leaders
Each University is represented in the Executive Team by a Node Leader. They are responsible for Hub activities within their Node, and for representing their Node at Hub meetings and other events. They are also responsible for reporting on their Node activities and being the liaison point between the Node and Hub leadership and management. The Node Leaders are as follows:
Professor John Bell
University of Southern Queensland
As an outstanding researcher in his area of materials engineering and energy, Professor Bell has led projects in the development of energy efficient smart windows, dye-sensitised solar cell development, and carbonaceous materials. He also has expertise in the area of energy efficiency and occupant comfort in buildings, and has carried out extensive research with industry. Professor Bell has received over $25 million in research funding during his 30-year career as a researcher. He has a wealth of experience and impressive track record in the development of research capacity in terms of research income and HDR completions, as well as national and international research leadership, including the ARC College of Experts and Laureate panels.Professor Bell is currently the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Innovation) at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ). Prior to joining USQ, Professor Bell was the Head of the School of Chemistry, Physics and Mechanical Engineering at the Queensland University of Technology.
Professor Yuan Chen
University of Sydney
Professor Yuan Chen is the Sydney Node leader of the SafeREnergy Hub. His research focuses on carbon materials and their sustainable energy and environmental applications, including supercapacitors, batteries, electrocatalysts, membranes, and antibacterial coatings. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK), and the Royal Australian Chemical Institute. He is currently serving as an editor for Carbon (Elsevier) and Journal of Alloys and Compounds.
Associate Professor Khay See
University of Wollongong
Dr. Khay See is a Principal Research Fellow at the Australian Institute of Innovative Materials at University of Wollongong. He has extensive experiences in both industry and academic career that provide him the various platform in engaging his research and development assignment. In his early career, Dr See was actively engaged in superconductor applications for power utility companies before diving deep into large scale battery energy storage for a wider range of industries. His most notable achievement is the development of an advanced battery management system for lithium-ion battery pack that utilised in electric automotive and renewable energy storage. He focuses in bringing the gap between the academic research findings and feasible industry solution that in most time researchers are often trapped in the laboratory scale development and theoretical assumptions while practical solutions are yet to be affirm. Dr. See’s expertise and capability has been spread across the country and together with the team effort, he has secured close to $7.5 million industrial research and competitive funding in the past 5 years. Dr See has also co-authored several high quality ranking journal in the relevant fields and persistently contributing technical experiences through invited talks and conferences
Professor Ian Gentle
Associate Director & Node Leader (University of Queensland)
Professor Ian Gentle joined the University of Queensland in 1993 following postdoctoral positions at the Research School of Chemistry, ANU and the University of New England. During 2008-2010 he was seconded to the Australian Synchrotron, Clayton, Victoria as Head of Science, returning to UQ in 2011. In 2013 he was appointed Associate Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Science, whilst continuing to lead a group in SCMB. In 2015 he was appointed Deputy Executive Dean, Faculty of Science.His team are developing new materials for use as cathodes in high-energy rechargeable batteries, particularly lithium sulfur batteries, and supercapacitors. Materials developed so far show potential increases in energy density of 3-5x that of lithium ion batteries. In this work, funded by industry and State Government, they are working to continue increasing the capacity of Li-S batteries in a new purpose-built facility.
Chief Investigators
Professor David Cahill
Deakin University
Professor Cahill holds a Personal Chair in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University and was previously the Associate Dean (Research) for the Faculty of Science, Engineering and Built Environment. He earned his PhD at The University of Melbourne and held post-doctoral positions in Canada and at the ANU prior to joining Deakin University. Professor Cahill is currently Deakin Scientific Director of the TERI-Deakin Nanobiotechnology Centre, New Delhi. He is a member of the ARC College of Experts. Professor Cahill’s research focuses on the impacts of biotic and abiotic stress on plants and the use of bio- and nanotechnology to solve problems in agriculture.
Professor Christopher Cook
University of Wollongong
Professor Cook’s research interests are in industrial automation, robotics and power engineering and his experience spans industry, R&D, academia, and education and training. He has extensive experience in overcoming the technical, cultural and training barriers to the cost-effective implementation of advanced technologies in order to achieve world competitiveness for both SME’s and big business. He has also managed the development of skills pathways, curricula and pedagogy required to support the assimilation and practical use of advanced engineering for students at Schools, TAFE, Universities and via Continuous Professional Development after graduation.In his time at University of Wollongong he has been a Head of School, and then Executive Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences (EIS) and its predecessors for 17 years with EIS disciplines at UOW now rating amongst the world’s best. He has been a CI in many ARC and other projects and had leadership roles in several Cooperative Research Centres including those in Advanced Manufacturing, Renewable Energy, Energy Pipelines, Rail Innovation and the National Defence Materials Technology Centre.
Professor Lianzhou Wang
University of Queensland
Lianzhou Wang is a Professor in the School of Chemical Engineering, an Australian Research Council (ARC) Australian Laureate Fellow, Director of Nanomaterials Centre, and Senior Group Leader of Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN), The University of Queensland. Professor Wang received his PhD degree from Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1999. Before joining UQ in 2004, he worked at two leading national research institutions (NIMS and AIST) of Japan as a research fellow for five years. Since joining UQ, he has worked as ARC Queen Elizabeth II Fellow (2006), Senior Lecturer (2007), Associate Professor (2010), Professor (2012-) and ARC Future Fellow (2012-16). Professor Wang's research focuses on the synthesis, characterisation and application of semiconductor nanomaterials for use in renewable energy conversion/storage systems including photocatalytsts for solar hydrogen and valuable chemical production, rechargeable batteries and low cost solar cells. In late 2018, his team has broken the certified efficiency world record of quantum dot solar cells. In the last 15 years' time, as a Chief Investigator, he has attracted a number of competitive research funds from ARC, CRC, CSIRO and industry. Prof. Wang has contributed 3 edited books, 14 edited book chapters, more than 450 journal publications, has filed 18 patents and delivered over 100 plenary/keynote/invited presentations. He is serving as Associate Editor/Editorial Boards of a number of international journals including Advanced Materials. He is a fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry and was named in the list of the Clarivate’ Highly Cited Researchers (ESI Top 1% cited).
Associate Professor Wenrong Yang
Deakin University
Associate Professor Wenrong Yang obtained his PhD from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in 2002. He then worked at CSIRO as a postdoctoral fellow before returning to UNSW in 2005 as a Research Fellow. He was awarded a University of Sydney Research Fellowship in 2007, before joining Deakin University at the end of 2010. He currently leads the Nanochemistry and Biodevices Research Group in the School of Life and Environmental Science at Deakin, and is interested in nanostructured surface chemistry, nanomaterials chemistry, single-molecule electrochemistry, and biosensor technology.
Dr Srikanth Mateti
Deakin University
Srikanth Mateti received his PhD in 2018 from Deakin University and his Master of Technology degree from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad, India, in 2011. He has been working as a Research Fellow in the Institute for Frontier Materials (IFM) at Deakin University since 2018.His research interests include in-situ synthesis and controlled doping of carbon and nitrogen into various nanomaterials, especially nanotubes (boron nitride, carbon) and nanosheets (graphene, boron nitride), using mechanochemistry (high-energy ball milling). He is also interested in developing new applications for these novel materials (thermal management, energy storage and catalysis).
Dr Chao Ye
University of Adelaide
Chao Ye received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Adelaide in 2020. He is currently a Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide, working with Professor Shi-Zhang Qiao. His research focuses on developing novel electrode materials and studying electrochemical mechanisms in next-generation high energy density and low-cost energy storage systems such as metal-sulfur and aqueous batteries.
Dr Baozhi Yu
Deakin University
Dr. Yu has been researching advanced nanomaterials for high-performance energy storage devices since 2011. He mainly focuses on designing and synthesizing materials with reasonable nanostructures and components to achieve high-performance energy storage devices. He has developed many novel nanostructures such as hierarchical tube-on-tube nanostructures and porous core-shell nanostructures for different energy storage devices including supercapacitors, lithium-ion batteries, lithium-sulfur batteries and all-solid-state batteries.
Dr Min Hong
University of Southern Queensland
Dr Min Hong
University of Southern Queensland
Dr. Min Hong received his PhD from the University of Queensland in 2016. After four-year postdoctoral research, he obtained a continuing lecturer position at University of Southern Queensland in 2021. His research field is thermoelectric materials and devices, including materials synthesis, thermoelectric performance evaluations, electron microscopy characterizations, density-functional theory calculations, and modeling simulations. His research has led to publications in high-impact journals, such as Joule, Energy & Environmental Science, Advanced Materials, etc. Moreover, he obtained the ARC DECRA fellowship and was involved in an ARC Discovery Project as a third CI.
Associate Professor Bin Luo
The University of Queensland
Associate Professor Bin Luo
The University of Queensland
Associate Processor Bin Luo is an ARC Future Fellow of Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN), The University of Queensland. Assoc. Prof. Luo received his PhD degree from National Centre for Nanoscience and Technology (NCNST), University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2013. Before joining UQ in 2014, he worked at NCNST as a research fellow for one year. Since joining UQ, he has worked as UQ Postdoctoral Research Fellow (2014-2018), ARC DECRA Fellow (2018-2021), and ARC Future Fellow (2021-). Assoc. Prof. Luo's research focuses on the design of functional nanomaterials for next generation energy storage systems including metal-sulfur batteries, Aluminium batteries, redox flow batteries and solar rechargeable batteries. In the last 8 years, as a Chief Investigator, he has attracted a number of competitive research funds from ARC, UQ and industry. Assoc. Prof. Luo has contributed 4 edited book chapters, more than 120 journal publications, has filed 13 patents and delivered over 30 keynote/invited presentations. His research has attracted >9800 citations with an H-index of 49 (google scholar). He is serving as Editorial Board/Young Advisory Board member of international journals including EcoMat and Catalysts.
Professor Ashok Nanjundan
University of Southern Queensland
Ashok is a Professor of Energy Storage at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia, and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Queensland (UQ) and the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). He is a nanomaterial (carbon) and energy expert and a former Chief Scientific Officer at Graphene Manufacturing Group, a listed company in graphene production and applications. His research excellence has been recognised by prestigious fellowships, such as Marie-Curie, JSPS-Japan, and UQ Fellowship, and has attracted several million AUD in funding. His academic output includes over 100 published papers, and seven filed patents in the field of nanomaterials and energy. His works appeared in high-ranking journals, e.g., Chemical Review, ACS Nano, Advanced Energy Materials, Energy & Environmental Science, Nature Protocols and Chemical Communications etc. He mentors young researchers and students in his field to advance the frontiers of materials science and energy storage.
Professor Colin Barrow
Deakin University
Professor Colin Barrow is Chair of Biotechnology at Deakin University. He is also the Director of the Centre for Chemistry and Biotechnology (CCB). Previously he was Executive Vice President of Research and Development for Ocean Nutrition Canada (ONC) where he led the development of seafood-derived supplement and healthy food ingredients and technologies.Professor Barrow has a Ph.D. in marine natural products chemistry from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and an MBA from Penn State in the USA. Professor Barrow has approximately 130 peer-reviewed publications and several patents. His research interests include a broad spectrum of natural products chemistry, biological chemistry, food biotechnology and omega- 3 oil technology.His current research is primarily in two areas: Omega-3 biotechnology and amyloid fibres and nanomaterials. His current research group at Deakin University has 8 post-doctoral fellows and 14 PhD students and he collaborates with a variety of research groups in India, China, New Zealand, Ireland and Canada.
Professor Shizhang Qiao
University of Adelaide
Dr Qiao joined the School of Chemical Engineering of the University of Adelaide (UoA) in March 2012 as a professor (the inaugural Chair of Nanotechnology). He is the founding Director of Centre for Materials in Energy and Catalysis (CMEC). His research expertise is in nanomaterials for new energy technologies (electrocatalysis, photocatalysis, batteries, fuel cell). He has co-authored more than 442 papers in refereed journals, and has filed four patents on novel nanomaterials and attracted more than 13 million dollars in research grants from industrial partners and Australian Research Council (ARC).In recognition of his achievements in research, he was honoured with inaugural UoA Vice-Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Research (2019), an Australian Star of Research (Lifetime Achievers Leaderboard, by "The Australian" 2019), prestigious ARC Australian Laureate Fellow (2017), ExxonMobil Award (2016), ARC Discovery Outstanding Researcher Award (DORA, 2013), Emerging Researcher Award (2013, ENFL Division of the American Chemical Society) and UQ Foundation Research Excellence Award (2008). He has also been awarded an ARC ARF Fellowship, an ARC APD Fellowship and an inaugural UQ Mid-Career Research Fellowship.
Partner Investigators
Christiaan Jordaan
Sicona Battery Technologies
Ahmed El Safty
Zero Emission Developments
Principal Engineer & CEO, Mr El Safty is the founding Director and the Company’s Principal Engineer with 37 years of experience in the energy sector. He is chartered with the Royal Institution of Chemical Engineers, registered with the Board of Professional Engineers of Queensland and a member of the Institution of Engineers Australia.With over 30 years of research and development experience in the energy sector in the USA, Saudi Arabia and Australia he has set up one of the world’s leading battery technology research facilities that employs 8 multi-disciplinary post-doctorate researchers who are supported by 14 engineers and scientists.More recently, Mr El Safty has signed the Company to a Research Hub that incorporates 6 of Australia’s leading tertiary education and research institutions, together with 7 other corporations to further develop and commercialise energy storage technologies. As part of this research, the Company shall be developing the grid stabilization application of Metal-Oxide Graphitic Psedoucapacitor Battery and the development of Sodium based battery.
Alan Ross
LDO Electric
Dr Stephen (Steve) Rowlands
Li-S Energy
Chief Technology Officer
Steve has over 20 years’ experience in the energy storage sector, including the last eight years as Deputy CTO at OXIS Energy, a pioneer of lithium-sulphur battery technology. At OXIS Energy, Steve managed the cathode, electrolyte, cell test engineering and production development teams. He has extensive knowledge of nanomaterials and their effect on the detailed mechanisms of lithium-sulphur technology. Managing the OXIS Energy production development team, he gained detailed knowledge of the scale-up processes required in delivering a pilot production line for lithium-sulphur battery manufacture.Steve has a First-Class BSc. (Hons) degree in Applied Chemistry and a PhD in Electrochemical Supercapacitors for Energy Storage.Keong Chan
Iondrive Technologies Pty Ltd
Managing DirectorKeong Chan has over 15 years of capital markets experience including early stage investment, capital structuring, IPOs and reverse takeovers. Served as chairman and non-executive director on a number of ASX listed and private companies. Earlier in his career, Mr Chan was employed by PwC and Deloitte working in tax consulting department with national responsibility for customs and indirect tax.He has a particular interest in early-stage projects and their journey through Commercialisation. He is involved in the capital raising and structuring process to bring projects to market through either public or private transactions pathways.
Steven Hickey
Redflow
Chief Technology OfficerSteve is a deeply experienced Electrical Engineer with particular skills in instrumentation and product development. A UQ 1981 graduate, Steve started his career in the mining patch and co-founded Blastronics (now Texcel) and developed the business over 15 years. After a stint as stay-at-home-dad, he joined Redflow as the test Engineer and had hands-on the first ZBMs at Redflow, ultimately leading to a 3-year secondment in USA. After 5 years with Magnetica developing MRI systems Steve was appointed as Redflow’s CTO on 1st September 2020.A key focus has been the analysis of battery pathology. Steve developed a Python application for charting and analysis of battery data held in the cloud database. Interpreting charts from scores of operational ZBMs has led to a detailed understanding of failure modes. Conducting battery autopsies and applying advanced techniques (SEM, FTIR, NMR) has provided a rational path to overcome existing limitations.
Andrew McVey
Shoalhaven Water
Water Operations and Maintenance Manager, Andrew has worked with Shoalhaven Water in various capacities for the last 21 years in engineering, operations and now senior management positions. The most testing times for any water utility is when critical services like power, communications or transport links are disrupted. Andrew has been at the helm of multiple such scenarios and thus brings first hand experience of the responses required and the level of resilience desired for effective risk mitigation. Andrew’s experience with emergency management through the drought, bushfires and floods will provide firsthand experience of these disaster scenarios for the project with University of Wollongong.
Sarry Bi
Panda Development Group
Panda Solar specialise in electrical engineering technology and electrical contracting of professional solar systems and farms.
Research & Technical Staff
Researchers & Research Engineers are appointed to assist Chief Investigators complete SafeREnergy research projects.
Dr Weidi Liu
The University of Queensland
Dr Weidi Liu
The University of Queensland
Wei-Di Liu is currently a Postdoc Research Fellow at Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, the University of Queensland, Australia. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Queensland, Australia, in 2020. His research interest lies in advanced functional materials, and is specially focusing on the understanding and development of novel thermoelectric materials, devices and applications.
Dr Rizwan Ur Rehman Sagar
Associate Research Fellow
Dr Rizwan Ur Rehman Sagar
Associate Research Fellow
Rizwan Ur Rehman Sagar completed his PhD (2010–2015) degree in Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. He has been served as post-doctorate fellow (2016-2018) in College of Materials Science and Engineering, Shenzhen University. During that period, he was awarded research funding from Postdoctoral Science Foundation of China (No.2016M592531). In addition, he has been selected as an excellent postdoctoral (2018-2020) young fellow at Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School, Shenzhen, China and and obtain a prestigious research funding from the National Natural Science Foundation (52050410344, and 11850410427) as Principal Investigator. He served Jiangxi University of Science and Technology, Ganzhou, as Associate Research Professor and nominated as honorary citizen of Ganzhou city and got prestigious award of Foreign Research Expert (QNJ2021022001) in China-2022. He is actively engaged in the fabrication of low-dimensional materials and detected interesting physical phenomena involved therein. He has been published more than 50 scientific articles in well-reputed journals such as CARBON, Nano Research, Applied Materials Today, ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, ACS Applied Electronic Materials, Nanoscale, Nano-Micro Letters, Sensors and Actuators: A-B, Chemical Engineering Journal, and so on. He is also serving Associate Editor in different journals especially Nanoscience-Frontiers in Chemistry. Now a days, he is working as Associate Research Fellow in Institute for Frontier Materials, Deakin University, Waurn Ponds, Melbourne, Australia.
Higher Degree Research
HDR or PhD students work with Hub Chief Investigators completing theses on research aligned to an industry partner funded project.
Wangmo Wangmo
Wangmo Wangmo
Wangmo is a PhD student at the University of Southern Queensland. Prior to completing a Masters in Engineering Science, with a major in Power Engineering at USQ, in 2019 under the Australia Awards Scholarship program funded by DFAT, Wangmo worked for ten years in the energy sector of Bhutan which is predominantly hydro based. With the Australian power system being a diverse energy mix, and with the longest transmission networks in the world, Wangmo is excited to be undertaking research on Use of High Energy Density Supercapacitors (HEDs) for Frequency Control Ancillary Services (FCAS) and Network Support Control Ancillary Services (NSCAS)”. This research is being funded by ARC, University of Southern Queensland and industry partner, Zero Emission Developments (ZED)Wangmo is a member of the SafeREnergy Gender and Diversity Committee, a crucial platform in the endeavour of contributing towards safe energy for everyone.
Strategic Advisory Committee
The Strategic Advisory Committee consists of a selection of national and international experts in the field, from both academia and industry. Its purpose is to provide independent advice on Hub direction, strategy, project focus and mix, potential funding opportunities, relationships, and partners.
Current members are:
Professor Chennupati Jagadish
Australian National University
Jagadish received the B.Sc. degree from Nagarjuna University, Guntur, India in 1977, the M.Sc(Tech) degree from Andhra University, Waltair, India in 1980 and the M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Delhi, India in 1982 and 1986, respectively. He was a Lecturer in Physics and Electronics at Sri Venkateswara College, University of Delhi, during 1985-88 and worked at Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada, during 1988-90 as a post-doctoral research fellow. He moved to Australia in 1990 and established a major research program in the field of optoelectronics and nanotechnology. He is currently a Distinguished Professor and Head of Semiconductor Optoelectronics and Nanotechnology Group in the Department of Electronic Materials Engineering, Research School of Physics, the Australian National University. He was the Founding Director of Australian National Fabrication Facility, ACT node (2007-March 2020) and Convenor of the Australian Nanotechnology Network.On Friday 26 November 2021, Professor Jagadish was announced as the the next President of Australia’s premier science organisation, the Australian Academy of Science.
Professor Rachel Caruso
RMIT
Rachel is the Director of the Enabling Capability Platform for Advanced Materials and Professor of Chemistry at RMIT University. Her research has focused on controlling the structure of inorganic materials during their synthesis. These materials have potential application in the areas of energy conversion and storage and the removal or breakdown of pollutants in aqueous solution. By careful control of the porosity and ensuring high surface area of the materials, they have been applied in dye-sensitised and perovskite based solar cells, lithium ion batteries, photocatalysis and as heavy metal adsorbents.
Professor Yoshio Bando
National Institute of Materials Science
Yoshio Bando has completed his Ph.D from Osaka University in 1975, Japan and joined the National Institute for Research in Inorganic Materials (at present, National Institute for Materials Science, NIMS) the same year. He has been Director-General of International Center for Young Science (ICYS) from 2003 to 2010, a Fellow of NIMS from 2004 to 2017 and a Chief Operating Officer of International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (WPI-MANA) from 2007-2017 and an Executive Advisor of WPI-MANA from 2018-2020 within NIMS. He has been also a Distinguished Professor at Australian Institute for Innovative Materials, University of Wollongong (UOW) from 2017 to 2021 and a Professor at Institute of Molecular Plus, Tianjin University from 2018 to 2021. He is now an Emeritus Fellow of NIMS and an Honorary Professor at University of Wollongong. He has received a number of awards including the “Sacred Treasure” given by the Japanese Emperor (2017), the 3rd Thomson Reuters Research Front Award (2012), the 16th Tsukuba Prize (2005), the Academic Awards from Japanese Ceramic Society (1997) and others. He is admitted as Fellows of The American Ceramic Society and The Royal Society of Chemistry. He has been selected as ISI Highly Cited Researchers in Materials Science in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021. To date he has authored more than 900 original/review papers which have been cited more than 63,000 times at H-factor of 131 (Web of Science, 2021). His research concentrates on novel synthesis and property study of inorganic 1D/2D nanomaterials for energy and environmental applications, and their in-situ TEM study.
Leigh Kennedy
NERA (National Energy Resources Australia)
As NERA’s General Manager Hydrogen, Leigh is focussed on working collaboratively with regional clusters to build an Australian hydrogen technology cluster that can be promoted around the world.Leigh has significant experience in working with all Australian state and territory governments along with key Australian Government agencies clients, as well as with investors across the industry and the world. At Austrade for almost a decade, Leigh worked with international network and government partners to drive Austrade's global resources and energy investment attraction and facilitation strategy and assist clients (developers, capital and technology companies) deliver on their Australian expansion plans. Aligned to many global companies’ transitions to becoming green and announcing net-zero emission targets, the focus honed in on renewable energy and hydrogen investment opportunities.
Robin Levison​
PPK Group
Robin Levison​
PPK Group
Robin Levison has 20 years of public company management and board experience. During this time, he has served as Managing Director at Industrea Limited and Spectrum Resources Limited and has held senior roles at KPMG, Barclays Bank and Merrill Lynch. He is a Non-Executive Director of a number of PPK Group Limited’s related companies including White Graphene Limited, BNNTTL, BNNT Precious Metals Limited, 3D Dental Technology Pty Ltd, Ballistic Glass Pty Ltd, Craig International Ballistics Pty Ltd, Strategic Alloys Pty Ltd and AMAG Holdings Australia Pty Ltd.Robin holds a Master of Business Administration from the University of Queensland, is a Member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants Australia and NZ and is a Graduate and Fellow of Australian Institute of Company Directors. Robin recently retired as Chair of the University of Queensland Business, Economics and Law Alumni Ambassador Council.
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