Speakers

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.

Talks

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.

Talks

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.

Talks

Currently serving as Co-Founder and CEO of Western CAM, Isobel is a 23-year veteran of the battery industry and was awarded an OBE by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to electric vehicle battery development. She has held senior leadership roles at Johnson Matthey, Cummins Inc., Britishvolt, and UKBIC, and currently serves on the Board of Trustees for The Faraday Institution. She brings deep international experience, including commercial engagements across China (CATARC, JAC, GAC) and Japan.

Talks

Dr Phoebe Allan is an Associate Professor in the School of Chemistry at the University of Birmingham (UoB). Her research focuses on materials chemistry for sustainable energy applications, including development of sustainable battery chemistries, recycling of lithium-ion batteries and remediation of nuclear waste.

She completed a PhD with Professor Russell Morris FRS at the University of St Andrews in 2012, where she worked on the storage of medical gases using metal-organic frameworks. She was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the group of Professor Clare Grey FRS from 2012 – 2013, then held a Junior Research Fellow at Gonville and Caius College, and an Oppenheimer Fellowship from the School of Physical Sciences, University of Cambridge from 2013 – 2018. Here, her research focused on developing synchrotron-based studies to understand and develop new electrodes for lithium and sodium-ion batteries. From 2015 – 2017, she has also worked as a beamline support scientist at Diamond Light Source –  the UK’s synchrotron source, developing sample environments for diffraction and imaging beamlines, and later working on the design of the new Dual Imaging and Diffraction (DIAD) beamline which became operational in 2020.  She joined UoB as a Birmingham Fellow in 2018, becoming Associate Professor in 2021.  She leads a group of 12 PhD and postdoctoral researchers and typically supervises 2 MSci undergraduate projects each year.

Dr. Laura Allerston is Commercial Director at Smart Villages, where she leads the development of the company. Smart Villages support rural communities in Sub-Saharan Africa with clean energy access which is used as a catalyst for sustainable impact, such as agriculture advancements and water access.

She has over 12 years experience in clean energy and completed her PhD at the University of Birmingham working on PEM electrocatalysts. Since graduating she has worked with circular battery projects across the world focusing on battery pack design and supporting systems to ensure the solutions can meet the requirements of the market. She has a particular interest in sustainability and circular solutions and works to build these considerations into developments across SSA.

Dr Gyen Ming Angel is the Managing Director of 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.

Beatrice Browning is the Battery Recycling Technology Lead in the recycling team at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. She holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham, giving her an in-depth technical understanding of lithium-ion battery recycling techniques. Beatrice has been working on the recycling forecast since March 2022, tracking regional advancements in battery recycling infrastructure, technologies, and policy frameworks to build up a global understanding of the lithium-ion battery recycling market.

Mahfuz Kamal is the Founder and CEO of RecoVolt, building the intake-stage infrastructure that turns battery risk into circular value. A Newcastle University PhD whose research was supported by the Faraday Institution, and a Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Fellow, he specialises in battery discharging, power electronics, and end-of-life EV battery systems. His work focuses on industrial safety, EV battery recycling, and the infrastructure required to scale the battery circular economy.

Pierre Kubiak is a Principal Engineer at NPL, the UK’s National Metrology Institute where he leads the battery metrology activities focusing on battery diagnostics, standardisation, and reproducibility protocols. Additionally he is chair of the BSI PEL/21 committee: secondary cells  and batteries.

He has over 20 years in the battery field. He received his PhD in chemistry from Université Montpellier II (France), and then carried out post-doctoral research at the Institute for Solid State Chemistry (ICMCB) in France and at the Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research (ZSW) in Germany. He then worked as a staff researcher at CIC energiGUNE in Spain, where his activities focused on the development of novel positive electrode materials for Na-ion batteries as well as the management of the post-mortem analysis and failure diagnostics of commercial Li-ion batteries. Subsequently, Pierre worked as a senior scientist at QEERI in Qatar, where he extended his activities to the characterisation of a 250kW/500kWh field-deployed Li-ion battery, before moving to join NPL in 2021.Background in materials development for lithium-ion and sodium-ion batteries, as well as diagnostics, post-mortem analysis, and system-level battery protocols. Worked across France, Germany, Spain, and Qatar before joining NPL in 2021.

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 Xuekun Lu is a Senior Lecturer in Green Energy in the School of Engineering and Materials Science at Queen Mary University of London. He is a recent ERC Consolidator Grant Award, 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 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.