Hydrogen is enjoying never-before-seen momentum due to the growing need for lowering carbon footprint. This is the time to scale up technologies and bring down costs to allow hydrogen to become widely used. MIT Startup Exchange is convening an MIT Hydrogen Startup Webinar on January 15, 2021, from 11:00 AM to 12:15 PM ET, featuring 3-4 MIT startups (including our STEX25, Syzygy) and a panel on Hydrogen Innovation with startup and corporate speakers. At 11:55, you will have 20 minutes to network with startups in Zoom breakout rooms.
Dr. Rebecca Xiong joined Corporate Relations as Program Director, Startup Exchange in October 2018. Dr. Xiong comes to Corporate Relations with more than 15 years of experience in the MIT Startup Ecosystem, having co-founded and worked at multiple MIT startups. Most recently, as Co-founder and Chief Scientist at SocMetrics, she leads product management, data science, and machine learning for SocMetric’s personalization and marketing campaign products. Before SocMetrics, Xiong co-founded Going.com. Going.com connected people via local events to enhance their offline social life, and through Rebecca’s leadership grew to 1M members, tens of millions of monthly pageviews, and finally its acquisition by AOL. Before these two entrepreneurial endeavors, Xiong held positions as Product Marketing Manager (DataPower, acquired by IBM), Senior Program Manager (Performaworks, acquired by Workscape), and Team Lead (Akamai Technologies). She also has research experience at Microsoft, Silicon Graphics, and Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. Dr. Xiong earned her B.S. in Computer Science at the University of California at Berkeley, and her Ph.D. in Computer Science at the Media Lab at MIT with her thesis “Visualizing Information Spaces to Enhance Social Interaction." She was a National Science Foundation (NSF) Fellowship Recipient. She holds multiple patents and is very involved in the community, as the Lead Organizer of the Cambridge Parent Summit.
Mr. Best is the founding CEO of Syzygy Plasmonics. Before starting Syzygy, he worked for Baker Hughes. There he steadily progressed into management, where he gained expertise in quality assurance (Six Sigma Black Belt), regulatory compliance, technology development management, project and personnel management, supply chain management, internal/external communications, and business process architecture. With Syzygy he has successfully raised two funding rounds and is currently focusing on bringing this revolutionary photochemical technology to market.
Ryan Gillis grew up near Houston before obtaining a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from BYU. Upon graduating he immediately began his doctoral work at MIT in the labs of Prof. William H. Green. There he focused on inventing new processes to improve and decarbonize traditional industrial activity. After graduating with his doctorate in late 2020, he founded Thiozen Inc. to commercialize some of his work on sour gas processing and hydrogen generation.
Ryan also enjoys spending time with his wife, Marcela, and nearly year old son Diego.
Dr. Laureen Meroueh earned her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, specializing in materials science and hydrogen generation, and a minor in Business & Entrepreneurship. Laureen is passionate about driving disruptive renewable energy-focused technologies from the lab to the market. Laureen was previously CEO and co-founder of MetaStorage, a start-up bringing large scale thermal batteries to power plants. Amongst other experiences in the entrepreneurial world, Laureen interned at the VC fund spun out of MIT, The Engine, and was a Sandbox Innovation Fund fellow at MIT. Dr. Meroueh leads business development and oversees technical progress at Alchemr, making green hydrogen a reality.
Taylor is the Founder and CEO of Origen Hydrogen. Prior to Origen, he worked 8 years for BP with broad experience across US, Latin America and Iraq. At BP, Taylor was involved with large natural gas supply projects to produce hydrogen as a feedstock for ammonia and methanol plants. Additionally, he successfully commercialized a novel chemical technology at BP. Taylor is completing an MBA at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. He also holds an MS Engineering from Stanford University and a PE license.
Mr. K-C Tran is CEO and Co-Founder of MAAT Energy Company and a Visiting Scientist at MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center. He is also the Co-founder of Carbon Recycling International in Iceland; financed and built the first power-to-methanol plant in the world. He studied management and engineering at MIT, Dartmouth College, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
CJ Guo joined the Office of Corporate Relations in July, 2015 after an extensive industrial career and global experience in technology portfolio management and business development in the energy and petrochemical sectors with leading multinational corporations (Shell, Air Liquide, BOC, and CANMET). Guo was expatriated to China as the Emerging Technology Theme Leader (Beijing) for Shell from 2011 to 2015 and a Senior Technology Advisor (Houston) with Shell Hydrogen from 2006 to 2010 during which he also served for one year as Chairman, Fuel Operations Group for the US DOE FreedomCar Partnership, USA. Before Shell, CJ has held positions as Technology Program Manager for Air Liquide, as Lead Engineer for The BOC Group (now Linde) in the US and as research scientist for CANMET in Canada. Guo earned his Ph.D., Chemical Engineering, at Cleveland State University, his M.S. and B.S., Chemical Engineering at Taiyuan University of Technology, and his mini MBA (Oil & Gas) with CWC School for Energy.
Dave Edwards is a Director and Advocate for Hydrogen Energy for Air Liquide in the US. Dave is responsible for establishing and maintaining internal and external partnerships with industry, academia, and government entities to advance the technology and business opportunities in Hydrogen Energy. Dave has been with Air Liquide for more than 20 years in a wide range of energy related roles.
Air Liquide is a leader in the global supply of hydrogen to mobility markets with a presence in more than 80 countries globally. Air Liquide is a founder and co-chair of The Hydrogen Council. Launched during the 2017 World Economic Forum in Davos, The Hydrogen Council is a global initiative of more than 80 leading energy, transport and industry companies with a united vision and long-term ambition for hydrogen to foster the energy transition.
Matthew Blieske, Global Hydrogen Product Manager, is currently responsible for product & technology development, cost reduction, reliability improvement, and supply chain development for Shell’s hydrogen mobility business globally. He joined Shell in 2013 to help start an internal innovation center on the MIT campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts founded on Systems Engineering, agile methodologies, and an entrepreneurial spirit. Prior to joining Shell, Matthew held the position of Director of Systems & Technology Development at an energy startup where he helped invent and commercialize a utility-scale energy storage system using compressed air in partnership with Conoco Phillips and Duke Energy. His core expertise includes thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, machine design, simulation & modeling, and engineering management. These skills were developed early in his career as a heavy maintenance engineer at Air Canada, a repair design engineer at a gas turbine manufacturer, and as a research engineer at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio. At SwRI, Matthew was principle investigator on several energy projects including solar concentrator power generators, gas compression projects, pipeline infrastructure, CO2 sequestration technologies, and supercritical power cycles. Matthew has a Master of Applied Science in Mechanical Engineering from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. He is an avid hunter and outdoorsman, and is a private pilot.
Disclaimer: MIT Startup Exchange can make introductions that ideally provide open ended discussions in order to share mutual interests and potentially create common ground that incite the parties to collaborate. MIT Startup Exchange introductions may eventually lead to mutual partnerships, but that is not in any way guaranteed by MIT, MIT Corporate Relations, MIT Industrial Liaison Program (ILP) or MIT Startup Exchange, which takes no responsibility for these outcomes and no formal part in such discussions following our introduction. MIT Startup Exchange and its activities and events are not for purposes of soliciting investment or offering securities.