2021 Annual Meeting
speakers
Keynote speaker
Thomas Thune Andersen
Chairman, Ørsted
Thomas Thune Andersen has chaired Ørsted through its green transformation and global growth. He also chairs Lloyds Register Group, a professional services company specializing in engineering and technology for the maritime industry and VKR Holding, a strategic holding and investment company with a focus on investments in improving indoor quality of life e.g. Velux Windows. Andersen is also a board member of the maritime company BW Group; IMI, a verification technology company for high-end design and manufacturing of flow valves focusing on safety and energy savings, and Green Hydrogen Systems. Further to his board portfolio, he is active in Friends of Ocean Action community and the World Economic Forum community, participating in the organization’s energy transitions commission. Over the past five years, his focus has centered on business transformation, sustainability, and the global energy transition towards a carbon-free future. In addition, Andersen is a member of the Danish Committee on Corporate Governance and the Gender Diversity Roundtable Denmark. Mr. Andersen previously served as executive vice president at A.P. Moller Maersk and as CEO of Maersk Oil.
Speakers
R. Brent Alderfer
Founder and Board Director, Community Energy, Inc.
R. Brent Alderfer is an energy entrepreneur who cofounded Community Energy, Inc. and led early development of utility-scale wind and then solar projects in the United States. Alderfer has been a leader in energy market innovation and continues to view climate action as a driver of jobs and economic activity. He is active in energy policy nationally and currently serves on the board of the Council for New Energy Economics. Alderfer previously served as a commissioner on the Colorado Public Utility Commission. He holds an electrical engineering degree from Northeastern University and a law degree from Georgetown University.
Christopher Ashton
Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Worley
Chris Ashton is the chief executive officer and managing director of Worley Limited. A leading global provider of professional project and asset services, Worley operates in nearly 50 countries worldwide through a diverse network of professional, engineering, project management and field-based team members.
Worley has more than 100 years of history delivering some of the world’s most complex engineering solutions, uniquely positioning the company to meet the demands of the global energy transition – a task Ashton takes to heart. Ashton’s role as CEO is marked by an acceleration of the company’s transformation strategy – putting passion, skills, and strongly held beliefs at the center of some of the biggest challenges on the planet.
Ashton joined Worley in 1998 and has held various leadership roles across the company as it evolved through acquisition as well as organic growth. Prior to taking on the CEO and managing director roles in February 2020, Ashton acted as chief operating officer and was responsible for the integration of the energy, chemicals, and resources businesses and setting the strategy for Worley’s eventual transformation. During his time at Worley, Ashton also held global roles where he was responsible for the performance of Worley’s fabrication businesses, global integrated delivery, and the power sector globally. He has held regional roles with responsibility for operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, as well as executive roles in strategy and sales. Ashton earned an M.B.A. from the Cranfield School of Management. He earned honors in electrical and electronic engineering from the University of Sunderland. Ashton is also a graduate of Harvard Business School’s advanced management program.
Scott L. Corwin
U.S. Leader for Sustainability and Climate Change, Deloitte
Scott Corwin serves as the United States leader for sustainability and climate change at Deloitte. He is responsible for setting the direction for the work of 120,000+ professionals across Deloitte’s U.S. accounting and assurance, advisory, consulting and tax businesses, assisting clients in transitioning their organizations to thrive in a low-carbon future. Over his 30+ year career in consulting, Corwin has worked closely with senior leaders and boards of global organizations to successfully undertake strategy-based transformations to address disruptive change in their sectors, markets, and communities. Prior to assuming his current role, Corwin founded and led Deloitte’s global future of mobility (FoM) practice. Under his leadership, Deloitte’s FoM team worked closely with corporations, governments, academia, and NGOs to actively shape the emergence of the mobility ecosystem and advance the adoption of seamless integrated mobility to enable people to move faster, safer, cleaner, cheaper and with greater accessibility, inclusivity and equity.
Corwin has authored numerous publications around sustainability and climate change that are part of Deloitte’s future of mobility collection including, “Leading a Low Carbon Future.” Corwin is a frequent keynote speaker at global conferences and universities, and a guest on media and podcasts, including ones by the Consumer Technology Association, World Economic Forum/Davos, the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Science, Fortune Magazine, and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. Prior to joining Deloitte, Corwin was a partner at Booz Allen Hamilton and Booz & Co. and, before that, a partner with AT Kearney in New York City. He earned his B.A. from Brandeis University and M.B.A. from New York University’s Stern School of Business. He serves on the advisory board of NYU Stern’s Fubon Center for Technology.
Claire F. Gmachl
Interim Director of the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment; Eugene Higgins Professor of Electrical Engineering; Head of Whitman College, Princeton University
Claire F. Gmachl is interim director of the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Electrical Engineering, and head of Whitman College at Princeton University. Her research group works on the development of new quantum devices, especially lasers, and their optimization for systems applications ranging from sensors to optical communications. Gmachl received her Ph.D. in 1995 from the Technical University of Vienna (Austria). She worked for seven years at Bell Labs, where she worked on quantum cascade lasers. She joined Princeton University in 2003. In 2005, she received a MacArthur Foundation fellowship.
From 2006 to 2016, Gmachl directed the Engineering Research Center for Mid-Infrared Technologies for Health and the Environment (MIRTHE), headquartered at Princeton. MIRTHE is a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center with partners including the City College New York, Johns Hopkins University, Rice University, Texas A&M, and the University of Maryland-Baltimore County. The center encompasses a world-class team of engineers, chemists, physicists, environmental and bioengineers, and medical doctors. MIRTHE developed infrared optical trace gas sensing systems based on new technologies, such as quantum cascade lasers or quartz-enhanced photo-acoustic spectroscopy, with the ability to detect minute amounts of chemicals found in the environment or atmosphere, emitted from spills, combustion, or natural sources, or exhaled in human breath.
Andrea J. Goldsmith
Dean, School of Engineering and Applied Science; Arthur LeGrand Doty Professor of Electrical Engineering, Princeton University
Andrea J. Goldsmith is the dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Arthur LeGrand Doty Professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University. She was previously the Stephen Harris Professor of Engineering and professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University, where she is now the Harris Professor Emerita. Her research interests are in information theory, communication theory, and signal processing, and their application to wireless communications, interconnected systems, and neuroscience. She founded and served as chief technical officer of Plume WiFi (formerly Accelera, Inc.) and of Quantenna, Inc. Goldsmith serves on the board of directors for Intel, Medtronic, Crown Castle Inc., and the Marconi Society. She also serves on the Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).
Goldsmith is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of the IEEE. She has received numerous awards for her work, including the Marconi Prize, the IEEE Sumner Technical Field Award, the ACM Athena Lecturer Award, the ComSoc Armstrong Technical Achievement Award, the Kirchmayer Graduate Teaching Award, the WICE Mentoring Award, and the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal’s Women of Influence Award. She is the author of the book “Wireless Communications,” co-author of several other books, all published by Cambridge University Press, and an inventor on 29 patents. Goldsmith received a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from University of California-Berkeley.
Goldsmith is currently the founding chair of the IEEE Board of Directors’ committee on diversity, inclusion, and ethics. She has also served on the board of governors for both the IEEE Information Theory and Communications Societies. At Stanford, she served on serval committees as part of the faculty senate, particularly those focused on women and leadership, undergraduate education, planning, and research.
Chris Greig
Acting Associate Director for External Partnerships;
Theodora D. ’78 and William H. Walton III ’74 Senior Research Scientist, Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, Princeton University
Chris Greig joined Princeton in 2020 to continue his leadership of the Rapid Switch initiative following a successful two-year appointment as the Gerhard R. Andlinger Visiting Fellow in Energy and the Environment at the Andlinger Center. Greig co-led Princeton’s Net-Zero America (NZA) study, which identified five technological pathways to achieve net-zero emissions in the U.S. by 2050, and is contributing to NZA-inspired studies for Australia and Asia. Prior to joining Princeton, Greig was director of the Dow Centre for Sustainable Engineering Innovation at The University of Queensland (UQ) in Australia and the founding director of the UQ Energy Initiative.
During a 25-year career in industry, Greig held senior executive roles in the energy and resources sectors, including CEO of ZeroGen, a large-scale carbon capture and storage project. He also served as chairman of the Energy Policy Institute of Australia and deputy chairman of Gladstone Ports Corporation. His research explores the technical, social, and business challenges of rapid, large-scale decarbonization of energy and industrial sectors. Greig has a Ph.D. in chemical engineering and is a fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering.
Scott Hobart
Chief Investment Officer, Mercator Partners
Scott Hobart is the chief investment officer of Mercator Partners, a sustainability-focused asset manager based in Princeton, New Jersey. Mercator invests across public equity markets globally with a focus on identifying sectors and business models that support the urgent need to decarbonize asset-heavy industries. The investment process at Mercator draws heavily on insights from academia and national laboratories. Prior to founding Mercator in 2017, Hobart spent 10 years as chief investment officer for Red Kite’s equity and alternative trading strategies, running some of the largest basic materials and commodities investment mandates globally. Hobart holds a CFA charter and commerce and arts degrees from the University of Melbourne.
Jane Hunter
Chief Executive Officer, Tritium
Jane Hunter has been the CEO of Tritium since March 2020 and joined Tritium as deputy CEO in September 2019. Tritium is a global technology leader in the design and manufacture of fast DC chargers for electric vehicles. Tritium has 90% of the market share in Australia, 20% of the European market, and 15% of the U.S. DC electric vehicle charging market. The company is headquartered in Brisbane, Australia and has offices, logistics, and production facilities in Los Angeles and Amsterdam.
Prior to moving to Tritium, Hunter was the chief operating officer for Boeing’s international advanced technology arm known as Phantom Works, responsible for developing Boeing’s airpower teaming system. The system, known as “the Loyal Wingman,” is a 38-foot stealth and reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicle. This Boeing division is headquartered in Brisbane, with sites in Saudi Arabia, India, South Korea and the UK.
Whilst at Boeing, Hunter was also a company director of Boeing Defence Australia and Boeing Distribution Services and chaired the South Queensland Defence Advisory Board. She is currently a director of the Electric Vehicle Council of Australia and a member of Queensland’s Manufacturing Ministerial Council.
Hunter has previously been independently recognized for her work. At the A18 Airspace Awards, she received the award for Outstanding Contribution to the Aviation/Aerospace Sectors – Women in Aviation/Aerospace Australia, and also received the Women in Defence Award in the project management category from the Australian Defence Magazine in 2019.
Yueh-Lin (Lynn) Loo
Chief Executive Officer, Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonisation; Former Director, Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment; Theodora D. ’78 and William H. Walton III ’74 Professor in Engineering, on leave from Princeton University
Lynn Loo is the chief executive officer of the Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonization (GCMD), a newly established not-for-profit organization based in Singapore, supported by six founding partners from the maritime industry and by the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore. GCMD’s mission is to help the sector accelerate its decarbonization efforts through shaping standards, deploying solutions, financing projects, and fostering collaboration across sectors.
Before GCMD, Loo was director of the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, where she substantially expanded the E-ffiliates corporate membership program and the center’s faculty, and most recently, commissioned the Rapid Switch Initiative and the Net-Zero America (NZA) study. NZA has provided unprecedented temporal and geographic granularity on pathways to achieve a clean energy transition in the United States. Loo is the Theodora D. ’78 and William H. Walton III ’74 Professor in Engineering, and professor of chemical and biological engineering, currently on leave from Princeton University.
Loo received B.S.E.s in chemical engineering, and materials science and engineering, from the University of Pennsylvania and her Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Princeton University. She is co-founder of Andluca Technologies, a startup developing wireless smart window retrofits to increase building energy efficiency and occupant comfort. For the development of this technology, she and her team received the 2020 Thomas Edison Patent Award from the Council of Research and Development of New Jersey. Her scholarly work has been recognized by numerous accolades, including the Sloan and Beckman Fellowships, the John H. Dillon Medal from the American Physical Society, and the Alan P. Colburn Award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. She is also a Young Global Leader with the World Economic Forum and a fellow of the American Physical Society and the Materials Research Society.
Rodney D. Priestley
Vice Dean for Innovation, Office of the Dean for Research; Pomeroy and Betty Perry Smith Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering; Associate Director, Princeton Center for Complex Materials, Princeton University
Rodney D. Priestley is the first vice dean for innovation at Princeton University. He is also the Pomeroy and Betty Perry Smith Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, the associate director of the Princeton Center for Complex Materials, and an entrepreneur. He earned his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Northwestern University in 2008. His research involves describing and developing complex materials, especially nanoparticles, thin polymer films, and nanocomposites, focusing on material properties at small length scales. From designing next-generation biocompatible surfactants to creating ultra-stable polymer films resistant to property changes upon heating, his work impacts industries ranging from personal care to aerospace. His recent interests include the use of polymers to manage the effect of systems on the environment. For example, his team recently developed a solar absorber gel technology that produces purified water from contaminated sources using only natural sunlight.
Recent recognitions include the 2020 American Physical Society Dillon Medal and 2020 American Chemical Society Macro Letters-Biomacromolecules-Macromolecules Young Investigator Award. The magazine the Root named him to its list of 100 most influential African Americans, and he was also selected as a World Economic Forum Young Scientist.
Robert H. Socolow
Professor Emeritus, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University
Robert Socolow is professor emeritus in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University. Socolow earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University in theoretical high-energy physics in 1964 and joined the Princeton University faculty in 1971 with the assignment of inventing interdisciplinary environmental research. Socolow works mostly on climate change solutions. He is well known for his paper with Stephen Pacala, the Frederick D. Petrie Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, “Stabilization Wedges: Solving the Climate Problem for the Next 50 Years with Current Technologies” (Science, 2004), which raised awareness that climate change mitigation could already be pursued aggressively. His interests include raising the level of ambition of the world’s global climate research in the natural sciences, encouraging technological “leapfrogging” by developing countries, stimulating the deployment of carbon dioxide capture during fossil fuel use, and anticipating the dangers of climate change “solutions” – notably nuclear weapons proliferation and land misuse.
Socolow is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an associate of the National Research Council of the National Academies, a fellow of the American Physical Society, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was the editor of Annual Review of Energy and the Environment from 1992-2002. He is a member of the science and security board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He was recently appointed to the National Academies’ committee to advise the U.S. Global Change Research Program.
Edward Stones
Global Business Director, Energy and Climate Change, Dow
Edward Stones is global business director of energy and climate change for Dow, based in Houston, Texas. He is responsible for delivering energy business profitability and power production at the 14 Dow-operated power facilities, as well as steam, utilities, and energy service to more than 100 manufacturing facilities globally. He leads Dow’s energy conservation and greenhouse gas reduction efforts, and actively participates in the company’s global advocacy efforts for energy sustainability and climate change.
Stones joined Union Carbide Corporation in 1997, now a subsidiary of Dow, as a manufacturing engineer at the St. Charles, Louisiana site. Stones has held numerous roles in manufacturing and finance, and commercial roles in hydrocarbons, specialty chemicals, and plastics. Among them are director of energy risk; director of hydrocarbons business development and plastics strategic development for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa; director of global hydrocarbons business development and hydrocarbons risk management; and most recently, senior director for investor relations. He has presented to Dow investors, as well as governmental, NGO, and industry stakeholders throughout the world.
Stones served as chair of the industrial efficiency sub-committee in the writing of the National Petroleum Council’s “Hard Truths” report and has provided testimony to the U.S. Senate Energy Committee on the role of natural gas in climate change. He has served on the European Petrochemical Association’s young executive think tank. Stones led the negotiation of Sadara feedstocks agreements with Saudi Aramco. Sadara is a joint venture between Dow and Saudi Aramco, comprising one of the world’s largest integrated chemical facilities and the largest ever built in a single phase. Stones holds a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and a master’s degree in environmental engineering from Stanford University, and an M.B.A. from Louisiana State University.
Vijay Swarup
Vice President, ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company
Vijay Swarup has held the role of vice president of research and development at ExxonMobil since 2014. He leads a team of scientists and engineers to develop technologies that can support the demand for global energy while transitioning to a lower carbon future. A 30-year veteran of ExxonMobil, Swarup has held a variety of leadership roles in engineering, chemicals, and planning from offices in Alberta, Canada, to Baytown, Texas. He has a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Rutgers University and serves on the National Academies Board on Chemical Sciences Technology, and the advisory boards for the MIT Energy Initiative and the Singapore Energy Center.
Charlie Weiss
Senior Vice President, Environmental and Sustainability, Occidental Petroleum
Charlie Weiss is senior vice president of environmental and sustainability, overseeing Occidental’s environmental performance, environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting, communications and social responsibility. Weiss is an environmental professional and attorney with more than 30 years of experience in aligning and enhancing safety, sustainability, ESG, and strategic communications. Most recently, he served as executive vice president of public affairs for California Resources Corporation, where he led health, safety and environment (HSE), sustainability, government affairs, communications, and community outreach. From 2007 to 2014, Weiss was Occidental’s vice president of HSE. Prior to joining Occidental’s legal department in 1996, he was in private law practice at Latham & Watkins.
Weiss holds a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering, cum laude, from Princeton University and a law degree from the University of Michigan, magna cum laude. He is a lifetime member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and a member of the executive committee of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative and the state bars of California and Texas.
Mark Widmar
Chief Executive Officer, First Solar
Mark Widmar became chief executive officer of First Solar, Inc. in July, 2016. He joined First Solar in April 2011 as chief financial officer (CFO), and oversaw all financial operations, including financial planning and analysis, treasury, internal audit, investor relations, accounting, and tax. While in that role, he also served as a director on the board of directors of 8point3 Energy Partners, the joint yield company formed by First Solar and SunPower to own and operate a portfolio of selected solar generation assets.
Prior to joining First Solar, Widmar was the CFO for Graftech International, and was also president of Graftech’s engineering solutions business. From 2005 to 2006, Widmar served as corporate controller for NCR Inc., an enterprise technology provider for restaurants, retailers, and banks. Prior to his appointment to controller, he was a business unit CFO for NCR, with responsibility for setting the financial vision and strategy for a $2 billion global enterprise. In this position, Widmar was instrumental in the establishment of strategic plans, annual operating plans, and pricing strategy. Widmar has also held various financial and managerial positions with Dell, Lucent Technologies, AlliedSignal, and Bristol Myers/Squibb. He began his career in 1987 as an accountant with Ernst & Young, Widmar holds a bachelor’s degree and an M.B.A. from Indiana University and is a certified public accountant.
