Speakers

Professor Martin Freer

CEO, The Faraday Institution

About

Professor Martin Freer joined the Faraday Institution as CEO in September 2024. He was previously Director of the Birmingham Energy Institute (BEI) at the University of Birmingham, a pan-discipline research centre. He also served as Director of the Energy Research Accelerator delivering a £200m programme to accelerate university research into regional, national and international impact linked to 1,400 researchers. Prior to that, Martin was Director of the Birmingham Centre for Nuclear Education and Research, which he established in 2010. Martin has co-led several policy commissions with the UK Government, including one that resulted in the creation of the Energy Innovation Zone in the West Midlands.

Martin is a nuclear physicist. His main research area is the study of the structure of light nuclei using nuclear reactions. He received the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Prize, Humboldt Foundation, in 2004 and the Rutherford Medal from the Institute of Physics in 2010.

Dr Emma Palin

Senior Electrochemistry Manager, Vertical Aerospace

About

Emma Palin is a Senior Electrochemistry Manager at Vertical Aerospace, where she leads the engineering strategy and qualification for battery cells for electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. Her responsibilities include leading sourcing, systems engineering, testing and modelling to optimise performance, lifetime and safety of cells for the battery system. As part of her work at Vertical, Emma also serves as a document editor for EUROCAE WG-112, contributing to international standards for aerospace battery systems. Prior to this role, she worked at Dyson, developing and characterising thin-film solid-state battery materials for solid state cell development.

Emma holds a PhD in Materials Chemistry from the University of Leicester, where her research focused on electrochemical and neutron reflectivity techniques for studying electrodeposition and dissolution processes of printed circuit board (PCB) metal systems. Her publications have focused on the study of materials, electrochemical processes and sustainable process chemistry and recent work in EES Batteries (2025) in collaboration with UCL examines battery cell selection for electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicles.

Professor Greg Offer

Professor in Electrochemical Engineering, Imperial College London

About

Greg is part of the large interdisciplinary and multi-departmental Electrochemical Science and Engineering group at Imperial College London. He is based in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and his research is based around battery, fuel cell and supercapacitor technology, and their application, mostly in transport. From the fundamental science to integration and systems engineering. The problems he investigates tend to emerge at the interface between the science and engineering.

Greg has worked with multiple industry partners, and successfully delivered multiple Innovate UK and industry projects. Greg is the Principle Investigator of the Faraday Institution funded Multi-Scale Modelling project, which helped create the PyBaMM and DandeLiion modelling environments. Much of the groups work on physics based modelling of lithium ion batteries is now contributing towards the growing PyBaMM global community.

Greg is a prolific entrepreneur and his research group has led to multiple spin-outs, Galvanic Energy Ltd, Cognition Energy Ltd, Breathe Battery Technologies Ltd, About:Energy Ltd and Ionetiq Ltd (only some of which he is personally involved). He is also the co-founder of one of the premier automotive conferences in the UK, the Future Propulsion Conference (FPC) series.

Greg obtained his PhD at Imperial College London in 2003-2006 under the supervision of Prof Anthony Kucernak on polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells, and then worked with Prof Nigel Brandon on solid oxide fuel cells. Greg has taken a few short breaks from science, working as a managment consultant, and as an advisor to Government and Parliament.

Professor Tom Scott

Professor of Materials, University of Bristol

About

Professor Tom Scott is a distinguished materials scientist and Director of the Interface Analysis Centre (IAC) at the University of Bristol, a specialist analytical centre for research on materials of all types. He holds a first class MSci honours degree in Geology and a PhD in Nuclear Materials.

He is also a Royal Academy of Engineering Professorial Research Fellow co-funded by the UKAEA, Director of the South West Nuclear Hub and lectures in both the School of Physics and the School of Earth Sciences at Bristol.

His research expertise is around the detection and characterisation of nuclear materials, to aid prediction of their behaviour in engineered and environmental scenarios. This includes a specific strand of activity relating to robotics and radiation detection for both fission and fusion energy applications. He works closely with UK government departments and agencies to ensure that facilities, materials and wastes stay safely managed.

Dr Xuekun Lu

Senior Lecturer in Green Energy, Queen Mary University London

About

Dr Xuekun Lu is a Senior Lecturer in Green Energy in the School of Engineering and Materials Science at Queen Mary University of London. He currently holds both an EPSRC Open Postdoctoral Fellowship and an EPSRC David Clarke Fellowship, and leads a research group focused on advancing next-generation high-energy-density silicon-based lithium-ion and solid state batteries through the integration of advanced manufacturing, multiscale 3D image-based modelling, multimodal operando imaging, and machine learning techniques. Before joining QMUL, he was a PDRA at UCL (2015-2022), where he contributed to the Faraday Institution’s Multiscale Modelling Project (2018-2022).

He has been delivering world-leading research in energy storage and conversion, signified by 65 total publications (h-index 32, citation>3600) and 16 first-authored papers including Nature Nanotechnology, two papers in Nature Communications, three papers in Energy & Environ. Sci. and one paper in Joule. Particularly, one of his papers in Nature Communications (10.1038/s41467-020-15811-x) is featured ESI Highly Cited Paper (citation > 570), selected as Editor’s Highlights, and became 2020 Top 50 Chemistry and Materials Sciences Articles; another Nature Communications paper (10.1038/s41467-023-40574-6) hits The Top 25 Chemistry and Materials Sciences Articles of 2023. His research output was frequently featured on the Annual Research Highlights of the Faraday Institution. He was awarded the prestigious Early Career Rayleigh Award by National Physical Laboratory of the UK in 2021 as a recognition of his work breakthroughs in overcoming the longstanding challenge in full-scale 3D imaging and reconstruction of the heterogeneous battery electrodes. He is also a Reviewer of the EPSRC Open Postdoctoral Fellowship, and of more than 20 top-ranking scientific journals including Science Advances, Nature Communications, Advanced Energy Materials, Cell Reports Physical Science, etc.

Dr Nuria Tapia-Ruiz

Reader in Energy Materials, Imperial College London

About

Dr Nuria Tapia-Ruiz began her independent academic career in 2017 as a Lecturer in Chemistry at Lancaster University, where she was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2020. In November 2022, she and her research group relocated to Imperial College London, and in September 2025, she was appointed Reader in Energy Materials.

Dr Tapia-Ruiz has received several prestigious awards in recognition of her contributions to the field, including the SRUK Emerging Talent Award (2022), Lancaster Researcher of the Year Award (2021), Royal Society of Chemistry Mobility Award (2019), CAMS Fellowship Award (2019), and two STFC Batteries Awards for Proof of Concept (2017) and Experimental Design (2016).

Her research group is a multidisciplinary team of students and postdoctoral researchers focused on the physics and chemistry of materials for energy storage. Their work primarily explores electrochemical energy storage technologies, such as rechargeable batteries and supercapacitors.

Dr Laura Lander

Senior Lecturer, King's College London

About

Dr Laura Lander is a Senior Lecturer in the Engineering Department at King’s College London since 2022 and a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow.

Her research focuses on the development of sustainable and resilient batteries. To this end, her group applies a multi-disciplinary research approach spanning from the design of cathode materials for next-generation batteries to life cycle assessment, techno-economic evaluations, and supply chain analyses.

Laura received her PhD in 2016 from the College de France/UPMC in Paris. She subsequently moved to the University of Tokyo, where she was awarded a JSPS postdoctoral fellow. In 2019, she moved to Imperial College London as a Faraday Institution postdoctoral researcher.

Dr Ismail Sami

CEO and Co-Founder, Molyon

About

Ismail Sami is the CEO and co-founder of Molyon, a spinout from the University of Cambridge delivering next generation energy storage solutions. He is also a Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Fellow, Entrepreneurial Fellow at the Faraday Institution, and Research Associate at King’s College, Cambridge.

Dr Ieuan Seymour

Lecturer, University of Aberdeen

About

Dr Ieuan Seymour is a Lecturer in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Aberdeen since 2023 and a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow. Ieuan’s research focuses on the discovery and development of new materials for energy applications, such as batteries and fuel cells. His group uses a combination of computational and experimental materials chemistry techniques to understand the complex relationships between the structure of materials and their performance in sustainable energy devices. A key area of his current research is focusing on how to improve the sustainability of next-generation solid-state battery technology.

Ieuan obtained his PhD in 2016 at the University of Cambridge in the group of Professor Dame Clare P. Grey. From 2018–2020, Ieuan was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, investigating new materials discovery of Li and beyond Li-ion battery cathode materials. In 2020, Ieuan moved to the Department of Materials at Imperial College London for another postdoctoral position where he studied the interfacial properties of solid-state batteries and was a member of the Faraday Degradation project studying the degradation of Ni-rich cathode materials.

Dr Gyen Ming Angel

Director of Venture Building, Prosemino

About

Dr Gyen Ming Angel is the Director of Venture Building at Prosemino, the first venture studio with its own chemistry labs built for climate tech. Prosemino co-founds and scales net-zero startups focused on electrochemical energy and materials science, taking them from concept through to seed investment. Its current portfolio includes Sention Technologies (advanced battery diagnostics) and Element 30 (zinc-ion batteries), alongside ventures in hydrogen, supercapacitors and methane mitigation.

Balancing the roles of investor and builder, Gyen works closely with scientists and entrepreneurs to translate breakthrough research into scalable businesses. He oversees Prosemino’s innovation team, supporting portfolio companies in technical development, commercial strategy, IP, and fundraising. He is also leading the company’s expansion, including the development of new lab spaces.

Prior to Prosemino, he worked with startups across feasibility studies, scientific development, and early growth. He holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from University College London.