Speakers

Robert Bryce | Author, Journalist, Film Producer and Host, The Power Hungry Podcast

Keynote Presentation: A Sober Look at the Energy Transition

Robert Bryce is an author, journalist, film producer and podcaster. He has been writing about energy, politics and innovation for more than three decades. He's the author of six books including his latest, A Question of Power: Electricity and the Welath of Nations. Bryce is also the host of the Power Hungry Podcast and the executive producer of the feature-length documentary, Juice: How Electricity Explains the World, which is available on numerous streaming platforms. He writes on Substack at robertbryce.substack.com He lives in Austin with his wife, Lorin, who is a teacher, photographer and master potter.

James Martin | Associate Director, Consulting, S&P Global

Keynote Presentation: Long Term Outlook for Low Voltage Automotive Batteries

James joined S&P Global (formerly IHS Markit) in June 2018. Based in the Southfield Office near Detroit, James leads the Automotive Consulting Services Team for Americas. Prior to moving to the Consulting Services Team, James served as Sr. Research Analyst - Powertrain Forecasts and also worked at General Motors in areas including manufacturing and tool engineering, service engineering and operations, product portfolio planning and competitor and technology intelligence. James’ areas of expertise include propulsion system design, operation, included technologies and trends, as well as forecasting the expected efficacy of the new technologies, and how those technologies might manifest in the development of engine, transmission, hybrid and electric vehicle products and strategies for key automotive companies and brands. James is a long-time member of Society of Automotive Engineers and Society of Automotive Analysts. He holds a Master of Business Administration (Corp. Strategy/Marketing) from the University of Michigan, as well as a Bachelor of Science (Industrial Engineering) from Kettering University.

Claudia St. John | Founder and President, Affinity HR Group Inc.

Keynote Presentation: Re-Imagining the World of Work – Strategies for Adjusting to a New Normal

Claudia St. John, SHRM-SCP, SPHR, is founder and President of Affinity HR Group, Inc., a national human resources and management consulting firm specializing in hiring and recruiting, HR compliance and employee engagement. Affinity HR Group is the endorsed HR partner and resource for more than 17 national trade associations and their member companies. As a consultant and frequent speaker, Claudia has given hundreds of presentations and workshops on such topics as how to recruit like a pro, common management mistakes, employee engagement and multi-generational workplace challenges. She is the author of the Amazon.com bestselling book Transforming Teams – Tips for Improving Collaboration and Building Trust. Her weekly HR Minute e-mails and monthly articles are followed by thousands of business leaders nationwide.

Andy Fisher

How Industrial Batteries Enable Automation

Andy spent 39 years at PepsiCo's Frito-Lay snack division. The first decade involved rotational assignments, including Engineering, R&D, Manufacturing and several field operations assignments. The remainder of his career was in HQ Supply Chain, which included a combination of Engineering and Operations, where he served as the Senior Director for Warehouse Operations for over 25 years. He was responsible for Warehouse Capital spending exceeding $1.5B during his career and for the $650M/Yr Warehouse Operations P&L. Andy has three patents related to Warehouse automation. Andy graduated with a Bachelors in Physics from SUNY and BME from Georgia Tech. He resides in the Dallas, Texas, area with his wife (who he asked out while driving a forklift in a warehouse), likes to talk shop with his two engineering sons and enjoys playing with his grandkids.

Christopher Galbraith | Zinc and Lead Market Research, Teck Metals

Mining for Lead in a Post-Mining Age for Lead Supply

Chris Galbraith is a Toronto-based mining professional. With a career spanning nearly two decades, Chris began as a geologist investigating a variety of exploration projects for most commodities and across most Canadian jurisdictions. In 2014, he transitioned to market research with SNL Metals & Mining (later a division of S&P Global), regularly publishing research on mine supply, exploration and mine financing trends and speaking at international conferences. In 2021, he joined Teck's marketing division as part of the company's Base Metals Market Research team.

Neil Hawkes | Principal Analyst, Base Metals – Lead, CRU

Time for Lead to Re-Energize its Resilience - The Changing North American Landscape for Battery Metal Lead and its Global ‘Green’ Role

Neil has been responsible for CRU’s lead market analysis for over 30 years and is a regular speaker at conferences. First founded in 1969, CRU offers unrivalled business intelligence on the global metals, mining and fertilizer industries through market analysis, price assessments, consultancy and events.

Nick Starita | President of the Energy Solutions Division, Hollingsworth & Vose

North America Industrial Lead Battery Trends and Forecast

Nick Starita is the President of the Energy Solutions Division at Hollingsworth & Vose (H&V), where he leads H&V’s global battery separator business. Nick has been supporting the lead battery industry for several years, researching and presenting trends and forecasts for the Industrial Lead Battery industry at both BCI and ELBC. Nick has been with H&V for twelve years. Prior to H&V, Nick was at Milliken & Company for nine years in Operations and Strategy roles.

Ryan Fogelman | Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, Fire Rover

Solutions to Battery Fires in Our Waste & Recycling Streams

Ryan Fogelman, J.D., MBA, is vice president of strategic partnerships for Fire Rover. He is focused on bringing innovative safety solutions to market and two of his solutions have won the distinguished Edison Innovation Award for Industrial Safety and Consumer Products. He has been compiling and publishing the “Reported Waste & Recycling Facility Fires In The US/CAN” since February 2016 and the “Waste & Recycling Facility Fires Annual Report.” Fogelman regularly speaks on the topic of the scope of fire problems facing the waste and recycling industries, detection solutions, proper fire planning and early-stage fire risk mitigation. Additionally, Fogelman is on the National Fire Protection Association’s Technical Committee for Hazard Materials. (Connect with Ryan on LinkedIn or email.)

Andrew Stack | Senior R&D Staff Member and Group Leader, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Barite nucleation and growth from fundamental perspective

Andrew G. Stack is a Senior R&D Staff Member and Group Leader in the Geochemistry and Interfacial Sciences Group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. His interests are the kinetics of geochemical reactions in aqueous fluids, on mineral surfaces and those in porous media. He examines these using a variety of experimental and computational approaches, including X-ray and neutron scattering, classical molecular dynamics simulation with rare event theories, atomic force microscopy and other techniques.

Cora Lind-Kovacs | Professor and Associate Chair, The University of Toledo

Design of Superior Expander Molecules for Advanced Lead Batteries

Dr. Cora Lind-Kovacs completed her pre-diploma in Chemistry at the University of Wuppertal in Germany before joining the graduate program in Chemistry at Georgia Tech in 1997. After obtaining her M.S. (1999) and Ph.D. (2001) degrees and a postdoctoral fellowship at Cornell, she joined the faculty at the University of Toledo (Ohio, USA) in 2003, where she is currently a full professor and associate chair in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. A solid-state chemist by training, she has used her expertise to build a well-respected research program on negative thermal expansion materials in her group. She has also applied her knowledge to various industrial collaborations to elucidate atomic level mechanisms or thermodynamic properties that dictate materials’ behavior. Most recently, she has turned her attention to investigating the atomic level effects of expander molecules in lead acid batteries.

George Brilmyer | President, Batt-Tek Consulting, LLC

Opportunities for Storing Energy One Electron at a Time

Dr. George Brilmyer is a scientist and electrochemist that has spent his 44-year career involved in all aspects of batteries, with decades of direct experience in Lead, Primary Alkaline and Li-ion technologies. His career has left him with a broad understanding of battery technologies, how they work, their pros and cons and how they can be applied.

Isaac Rhoades | Manager, American Electric Power

How American Electric Power Meets the Needs of New and Existing Customers

Isaac Rhoades is the Manager of the Transmission Customer Project Management team for American Electric Power’s Ohio footprint. He has spent the last several years working closely with Economic & Business Development and System Planning teams within AEP, taking customers through RFI, project scoping, engineering and ultimately construction to provide new or upgraded high voltage electric service. Isaac has been with AEP for 8 years, starting in engineering and then transitioning to project management where he has had an ever-evolving roll. He holds a Bachelors in Material Science Engineering and a Masters in Business Administration, both from The Ohio State University.

Michael Starke | Electrical Engineering System Integrator, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Power Electronics Integration with Batteries

Michael Starke is a Electrical Engineering System Integrator at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He has been at ORNL for over 10 years performing research in different areas of optimization, control and communications in power systems. He received his B.S, M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering at The University of Tennessee in 2004, 2006, and 2009 respectively. He is a member of IEEE and of the Power and Energy Society with over 50 publications in power systems and power electronics. His research areas have been primarily focused on energy storage, load control, and microgrids but he has been actively engaged in wind and solar generation research as well. In the microgrid area of research, he has led a team that developed an open-source microgrid controller called CSEISMIC, which is currently being utilized in a number of demonstration projects. He has also led a team that has successfully constructed a secondary use energy storage system composed of Nissan batteries for deployment with Habitat for Humanity. He has also worked on several load control projects (Connected Neighborhoods) and demand response projects with industrial load partners and received a patent on a tool developed to estimate the demand response potential of industrial plants. Most recent work has focused on extreme DC fast charging for electric vehicles and electric vehicle charging resilience.

Patrick Balducci | Manager, Argonne National Laboratory

Storage Innovations 2030

Patrick Balducci is the Manager of the Power Systems and Markets Research Group in the Center for Energy, Environmental, and Economic Systems Analysis at Argonne National Laboratory. At Argonne, he also serves as the Lab Relationship Manager over the DOE Renewable Power Programs and Office of Electricity Energy Storage Program. Patrick has led research efforts evaluating the benefits of 1.8 GW / 19 GWh in energy storage capacity at 17 sites across the U.S. and leads efforts to enhance economic assessment tools for the U.S. Department of Energy. He holds a BS in Economics from Lewis and Clark College, where he graduated with honors and an MSc in Applied Environmental Economics from the University of London, Imperial College of London.

Vivek M. Rao | Nuclear CFD Development Engineer, Thermal Hydraulics Group

Silicon and Lead Oxide: Preliminary Modeling and Simulation to Undertsand Competing Kinetics in Reverbatory Furnaces

Vivek M. Rao Ph.D. is a Nuclear CFD Development Engineer in the Thermal Hydraulics Group. With specialized interest in applied fluid mechanics, he has participated in various programs of the U.S. Department of Energy to develop, extend and adapt computational tools on high-performance computing resources to challenges in energy engineering, materials interactions and large-scale chemical manufacturing processes. Vivek brings 10+ years of inter-disciplinary experience in computational fluid dynamics for reacting flows (gasification, combustion), equipment design (pressure vessel, heat exchangers, turbomachinery), and process intensification. He has participated in experimental investigations relating to synthesis and characterization of nanomaterials for energy storage, surfactant-enhanced soil remediation and flow visualization. At ORNL, Vivek has supported mission-aligned research for the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS), Building Technologies Research & Integration Center, and the Material Plasma Exposure eXperiment (MPEX).

Rebecca Conway | Senior Director of Marketing and Technical Services, Clarios

North American Transportation Market Update and Forecast

Rebecca Conway leads US-Canada marketing, strategy and technical services at Clarios. She has been with the company for nearly 13 years with various roles across category management, sales, strategy, and marketing. Prior to joining the automotive aftermarket, Rebecca worked in market research and analytics in consumer-packaged goods. Rebecca is on the Steering Committee for Women in the Global Battery Industry and is passionate about advancing women in our industry.

Scott Childers | Vice President, Essential Power Division, Stryten Energy

Flow Batteries Working Group: An Overview of the Technology, Its Applications and the State of the Industry in the U.S.

Scott Childers is Vice President, Essential Power division of Stryten Energy. In this role, he is responsible for growing the company’s energy solutions and new technology offerings. He champions clean, renewable energy opportunities for Stryten and actively works with utilities and original equipment manufacturers to deploy long-duration, sustainable energy storage solutions.

Mr. Childers spent more than 15 years in the automotive industry, working for General Motors and its subsequent spin-off Delphi Automotive where he served in a variety of capacities between engineering and operations. Mr. Childers led key organic growth initiatives as Director of Operations and Engineering for CTS Corporation, and he also spent seven years as the General Manager for Schaffer Gear. Prior to joining Stryten, he led Hillphoenix’s global technical community as Vice President, Technology. In this capacity, Mr. Childers led a team of more than 200 engineers and scientists in developing world class solutions for thermal and electrical energy management for refrigeration, glass door and merchandising systems.

Mr. Childers received his major and minor degrees in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, respectively, from the University of Dayton. He studied under a GM Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as part of their System Design and Management program, receiving a joint master’s degree from the Sloan School of Management and the Engineering Systems Division.

Tim Fister | Materials Scientist, Chemical Sciences and Engineering Division, Argonne National Laboratory

LBSRP: a model for collaboration between the lead battery industry and DOE national labs

Tim Fister is a materials scientist in the Chemical Sciences and Engineering Division at Argonne National Laboratory. Tim specializes in the characterization of materials for energy storage and conversion in their operating conditions using a wide range of synchrotron x-ray techniques. He is author of over one hundred publications and PI in numerous DOE and industry-funded projects.

Chris Pruitt | President of the Board of Directors, Battery Council International | President and CEO, East Penn Manufacturing Co., Inc

Welcome and Opening Remarks: A Bright Future for Domestic Battery Manufacturing

Mr. Pruitt currently serves as President/CEO of East Penn Manufacturing Co. Inc., maker of Deka Batteries. East Penn Manufacturing is the second largest battery manufacturer in the U.S. and is also the owner of the largest singlesite facility for lead in the world. Mr. Pruitt also serves as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of East Penn Manufacturing Co., as well as on the company’s Family Council and Foundation. He has been with the company since May of 1994. He joined East Penn as the Controller and has held numerous financial positions including Chief Financial Officer. Prior to joining East Penn, Mr. Pruitt was a CPA at Ernst & Young for ten years holding the position of a Senior Manager in the Audit division. While working at Ernst & Young, he earned his Certified Public Accountant designation. Mr. Pruitt earned a B.S./B.A. degree in accounting from Shippensburg University in 1984