International EV Batteries 2023: Cost-Effective Engineering for Hybrid and Electric Vehicles

Alistair Farman: Chief Engineer, MAHLE Powertrain

Alistair Farman is Chief Projects Engineer at MAHLE Powertrain, with experience across a wide range of technologies from motorsport and industrial engines to cutting-edge battery concepts. His experience includes work with 3-, 4-, 6- and even 12-cylinder high-performance engines, including V12 supercars and range extender technology. Building on his early work with NVH and emissions controls, which included the development of novel DPF regeneration technologies for the likes of Caterpillar, he has more recently been involved with MAHLE Powertrain's innovative M3X battery concept and immersion-cooled battery projects.

Andy Palmer: Board Director, InoBat; Hilo; PodPoint

Dr Andy Palmer CMG is a chartered engineer and automotive executive. Having served in leadership positions at both Nissan and Aston Martin, Andy has led transformational change at two of the world's most recognisable businesses in the industry.

Andy started his career as a 16-year-old Apprentice and went on to be appointed CEO of Aston Martin Lagonda, where he oversaw the launch of four core car models with nine derivatives, including the development and launch of the DBX, the company's first foray into the growing Luxury SUV market.

Prior to joining Aston Martin, Andy was the COO of Nissan where he launched the Nissan LEAF, the world’s first mass-market electric vehicle. His role in developing the LEAF has led the media to refer to him as the ‘Godfather of EVs’.

Today, Andy works with a number of businesses operating in the clean mobility space including battery manufacturer InoBat, electric scooter company HiLo and EV charging provider PodPoint.

Hadi Moztarzadeh: Head of Technology Trends, Advanced Propulsion Centre

Dr Hadi Moztarzadeh is a Chartered Engineer (CEng) and a Fellow of IMechE (FIMechE) with over 20 years’ experience in both academia and industry. He collaborates with technology organisations, academia and industry, to de-risk innovation, accelerate technology transfer, and drive growth across the UK manufacturing and transport sectors. As the Head of Technology Trends, Hadi leads the technology strategy and roadmaps at the APC.

Before joining APC, he was the Director (& Associate Dean) of Research and Innovation at Salford University, where he developed the research and innovation strategy. Prior to that, Hadi had a 9-year career with WMG, University of Warwick, most recently led the cross-Catapult portfolio at WMG High Value Manufacturing Catapult (HVMC), with a focus on Net Zero Transport.

Hadi has a PhD from University of Warwick and an MSc in Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Management from University of Sheffield. He has been the honorary treasurer of the IMechE Birmingham Automotive Division for over a decade and has been elected the Vice-Chairman of the IMechE Midland region in 2022.

Thomas Bartlett: Deputy Director, Faraday Battery Challenge, Innovate UK

As Deputy Challenge Director for the £541 million Faraday Battery Challenge (FBC) Thomas is helping to develop a UK battery technology industry that is high tech, high value and high skill. The FBC aims to make the UK a science superpower for batteries by supporting the UK’s world-class battery facilities along with growing innovative businesses that are developing the battery supply chain for our future prosperity.

Previously the Head of Battery Technology for the Challenge, Thomas led the delivery of the industry led CR&D portfolio as well as its technical strategy. His background is in electrochemistry and battery research, having gained a DPhil in nano-electrochemistry from Oxford University, before working on industrial next generation battery research and scale-up programmes spanning lithium-ion, solid state and lithium sulfur batteries. He is also a Chartered Engineer and professional member of the Institute of Materials, Minerals & Mining.

Cedric Rouaud: Fuel Cell Systems Director, Bramble Energy

Dr. Cedric Rouaud is Director of fuel cell systems since March 2022 in Bramble Energy which is a UK based fuel cell company that develops PCB fuel cell stacks and systems.

He was previously working in Ricardo for 13 years in the thermal and energy management domains for electrified propulsion systems including fuel cells, battery, electric motor and power electronics. He began his professional career in Renault passenger car OEM as a research thermal engineer in 2000, while fulfilling his doctorate diploma in the University of Poitiers on thermal management of hybrid electric vehicle. He was thermal management chief engineer in Renault between 2005 and 2008 for electrified and conventional powertrains.

Joe Stevenson: Chief Executive Officer, Anaphite

Joe Stevenson has been CEO of Anaphite since September 2022. He has 25 years experience in the chemicals industry, commercialising new functional materials for automotive and energy applications and for process industries.

Mark Collins: E-Mobility Product Manager, Volvo Trucks

Mark has been at the Volvo Group for 6 years in total within Homologation & Type Approval, Engineering - with a focus on decarbonising road transport including use of alternative fuels - and most recently Electric Vehicle Product Management where he is responsible for the range of Battery Electric Heavy-Goods Vehicles in the UK and Ireland ranging from 16 to 44 tonnes gross mass.

Mark studied Mechanical Engineering and is an Incorporated Engineer with the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

Denis Pasero: Product Commercialisation Manager, Ilika

Denis Pasero joined Ilika Technologies in 2008, as a scientist specializing in battery technology, to manage commercial lithium ion projects. He became part of the Ilika team to apply his strong academic knowledge to commercial applications and saw the potential to be part of the development and success story of an enterprising smaller company with exciting technology and novel product ideas. Today, as Product Commercialization Manager, Denis interfaces between customers and technical teams.

James Hoxey: Head of Business Development, Williams Advanced Engineering

James has worked in the Automotive technology space for over 10 years, specialising in Battery Technologies for 9 of those. He currently leads the Business Development team at WAE & Hyperbat, working on opportunities to grow the business, with conventional B2B partnerships and collaborative R&D programmes as key result areas, working in several market segments from Motorsport through to Mining Haul Trucks.

His career in Automotive Engineering and Manufacturing businesses has always been focussed on Powertrain products; before WAE, James held a Global Business Development role at Johnson Matthey Battery Technologies, working with several car manufacturers delivering High Performance Battery Systems. Prior to this, he had global commercial responsibility for the Ford Business Unit at Avon Automotive (Now Akwel); managing Powertrain Cooling Systems for Ford Engine and Vehicle Platforms which included delivery of the cooling system for the award winning EcoBoost engine.

Charlotte Roe: PhD Researcher, Imperial College London

Charlotte Roe is a PhD candidate in the Dyson School of Design Engineering, where she works with Dr Billy Wu and the Electrochemical Science and Engineering group on lifetime degradation and performance studies for immersion-cooled systems in electric vehicles. She is funded by EPSRC and is part of the Shell University Technology Centre and has worked alongside shell to develop methods for understanding performance of fluids and how that is related to the aging and performance of lithium- ion batteries. She has published a review paper highlighting the important areas of research for immersion cooling in the electric vehicle industry.

Jennifer Wen: Professor of Engineering, University of Warwick

Jennifer Wen joined the School of Mechanical Engineering Sciences (MES), University of Surrey as Professor in Energy Resilience in January 2023. She previously held positions at Computational Dynamics Limited (founding vendor of STAR-CCM), British Gas plc, South Bank University, Kingston University London, and University of Warwick.

Jennifer’s team pioneered the development of an electrothermal model for the evolution of lithium-ion battery (LIB) from normal to abuse conditions until thermal runaway in 2015; and subsequently conducted numerical and experimental investigations on the use of phase change material to improve thermal management for LIB cell clusters and fire/deflagration characteristics of high energy density LIBs. In the recently completed Innovate UK funded  LibRIS project led by Jaguar Land Rover, Jennifer was the Work Package Leader for Modelling. Her team developed models for thermal and mechanically induced thermal runaway as well as the resulting gas and spark ejections and fires. The models have been further used to evaluate mitigation measures and optimize LIB module design.

At Surrey, Jennifer established and leads the Fire and Explosion Modelling Group (FMEG). Both hydrogen and battery safety are among the key research themes of FMEG. She is a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Vice-Chairman of the International Association for Fire Safety Science (IAFSS) and Chair of IAFSS “Research” sub-committee. Jennifer is also a member and sub-task leader of the European Safety Panel on Hydrogen Safety (EHSP) established by the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (now Clean Hydrogen Partnership) of the European Commission.

Joel Sylvester: Chief Technology Officer, Dukosi

Joel Sylvester is CTO at Dukosi and co-founded the company in 2003. He is a specialist in multi discipline engineering, RF design and mixed signal integrated circuit design in fields including battery management systems. Prior to Dukosi, he was Head of Electronics at the UK Astronomy Technology Centre, designing data acquisition electronics for the world’s largest telescopes, and at Elektrobit designing systems and circuits for the communications industry. Joel studied Electronics and Electrical Engineering at University of Edinburgh.

Francesco Restuccia: Lecturer, Department of Engineering, King’s College London

Dr Francesco Restuccia is a Lecturer at King’s College London Department of Engineering, where he leads the Heat and Fire Lab. He has a growing profile in lithium-ion battery heat transfer research, focusing on safety aspects such as ignition prevention and improving overall thermal performance.

He is a member of the SAFEBATT project funded by the Faraday Institution, leading a project at KCL focusing on Multiphysics Modelling of LIB Thermal Runaway and Propagation. His research has been recognized by several awards, most recently the best paper award in energy storage at the 16th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics. He is a motivated educator, teaching a variety of General Engineering courses, as well as regularly involved in science outreach to promote multidisciplinary approaches to engineering problems.

James Eaton: CEO and Co-Founder, IONETIC

James Eaton founded IONETIC in January 2022 with the goal of providing an efficient blend of customisation and cost reduction in battery pack development to niche vehicle manufacturers. Prior to that, James was a Researcher in the Electrochemical Science and Engineering Group at Imperial College London, focusing on the design, test, and simulation of battery cells and packs for automotive applications.

Tim Powell: Automotive Sector Specialist, Science and Technology Facilities Council; Hartree Centre

Tim Powell has a background of physics-based modelling and software engineering, and is now leading the STFC Hartree Centre’s involvement in the Automotive industry with the aim of accelerating the adoption of High-Performance Computing (HPC), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Emerging Technologies (such as Quantum Computing) to solve the substantial challenges currently faced by the Automotive sector. Tim develops and delivers the Hartree Centre’s Technology Roadmap for the Automotive sector, including identifying key challenges and ensuring the Hartree Centre is positioned with the capabilities to deliver timely solutions. Prior to Tim’s posting as Automotive Specialist, he specialised in bringing the power of HPC to non-HPC experts through automated workflows and containerisation.

Jessica Roberts: Head of Forecasting, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence

Jessica Roberts is Head of Forecasting for Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, leading a team of global analysts responsible for Benchmark’s forecast subscription services. She has spent the past 15 years demystifying the opaque world of critical materials, at global research and consultancy organisations including Wood Mackenzie, Roskill, and Fastmarkets. Jessica has advised and led research programmes across a range of critical minerals and metals, including those for batteries, aerospace, electronics and manufacturing sectors. She is an authoritative voice on critical material supply chain dynamics, regularly featuring in print and broadcast media. Jessica is originally a Geologist by training and has a Master’s degree in Geology from the University of Leicester.

Sarah Montgomery: CEO and Co-founder, Infyos

Sarah Montgomery is the CEO and Co-founder of Infyos. The digital platform that helps automotive and battery players manage, measure and improve their supply chains and sustainability impacts. Sarah is a leading expert in battery and electric vehicle sustainability. She is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Battery Alliance and IRMA’s Working Group on Circular Economy. Sarah has been recognised as a one of the world’s most impactful leaders on Forbes 30 Under 30 and has been featured in publications including Sifted and Business Insider. Sarah speaks Chinese and has previously built the China expansion at the supply chain technology scale-up Everledger backed by Tencent.

Varnika Agarwal: Battery Research Analyst, Rho Motion

Varnika works as Research Analyst for Rho Motion, specialising on battery technology market analysis. She has a strong research background through her DPhil at University of Oxford. During her time in Oxford, she researched on solid-state batteries under the supervision of Prof Sir Peter Bruce with research papers published in high impact journals. Prior to her DPhil, she did a master’s project on solar cells and undergrad in Chemistry. 

Daniel Fung, Head of Strategy and Performance Fung: Head of Strategy and Performance, Advanced Propulsion Centre UK

Dan Fung has been with the Advanced Propulsion Centre for 5 years and currently heads up Strategy and Performance. He graduated from the University of Birmingham in Mechanical Engineering and started his career in Aerospace propulsion control systems before moving to the automotive industry. Dan is passionate about decarbonisation and the UK business growth opportunities offered along the road to net-zero.

Laura Lander: Lecturer, Department of Engineering, King’s College London

Laura is a Lecturer at King's Department of Engineering. Her research aims to tackle the challenges of current energy storage systems and, ultimately, to develop high-performance sustainable battery devices. She applies a multi-scale research approach working at the interface between materials science i.e. the design and characterisation of energy storage materials, and engineering including life cycle assessment and techno-economics.

Yashraj Tripathy: Head of Product, About:Energy

Dr. Yashraj Tripathy leads the product portfolio at About:Energy. Acting as the voice of A:E's customers, he collaborates closely with engineering, customer and commercial functions to digitalise the battery value chain for emerging industries in electrification.

With over 9 years of technical leadership experience in battery research and product development across the automotive and aerospace sectors, Yashraj has held engineering management roles at Rolls-Royce, specialising in propulsion batteries for electric aviation, and at WMG, where he excelled as a Principal Engineer for battery safety, earning several merit awards. Yashraj has actively contributed to EuroCAE working groups and has served on Faraday Institution's select committees focused on EDI and early career researchers. In recognition of his academic and professional achievements, he was appointed as an Honorary Associate Professor with the University of Warwick in March 2022.

Yashraj holds a PhD from the University of Warwick, where he championed the benefits of isothermal testing platforms for parameterising lithium-ion battery models. He also graduated with a 1st Class B.E. (Hons) in Mechanical Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani. Hailing from the coastal plains of Eastern India, Yashraj firmly believes that progress in batteries is a crucial step towards achieving global net zero ambitions. He advocates for the democratisation of battery development, making it accessible to all, including new SMEs, large OEMs, and companies from the global south.

Mark Scully: Head of Technology – Advanced Systems & Propulsion, Aerospace Technology Institute

Mark joined the ATI in 2015 and is responsible for the UK aerospace technology strategy and the delivery of the portfolio of R&T projects including: ultra-efficient and zero carbon propulsion systems, next generation aircraft systems, and technologies for aircraft design, manufacture & assembly, operation, and end of life.

Mark has extensive aerospace engineering experience in product design and development, airframe systems integration, certification and more recently leading research and technology development in aero engine controls and installations.

Mark has a Batchelor of Technology degree in Mechanical Engineering and is a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the Institution of Engineering & Technology.

Peter Miller: Chief Engineer - Batteries, UTAC

Peter joined what is now UTAC in 2018 as the Chief Engineer for Batteries. Based at UTAC’s site in Millbrook UK, Peter provides expert knowledge and experience in the technical and practical aspects of battery technology.

Previously he worked for Johnson Matthey Battery Systems for 6 years as Chief Electronics Technologist, prior to this he was Director - Electrical/Electronic Engineering at Ricardo a large automotive consultancy where he specialised in batteries.

James Grey: Fire Engineer, Transport for London

James was a firefighter based at Paddington Fire Station for 11 and a half years. A year and a half of that time was spent in a secondment with Fire Safety. James graduated with a degree in Fire Risk Engineering from Glasgow Caledonian University. James joined Transport for London in 2021 and works as a Fire Engineer, working mainly with Bus Engineering and London Trams.