Mr.Abe joined Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry(METI), Japanese Government, in 2003, where he held various positions for 20 years such as the deputy assistant secretary for diet affairs (2023-2025). In July 2025, he has assumed the role of the director general of New Energy and Industrial Development Organization(NEDO) Washington DC/Special Advisor to METI, where he is engaged in facilitating the relationship between Japanese government and industries with US government agencies such as ARPA-E.

Elizabeth A. Adams is the Business Development Manager with UT's Center for Electromechanics (CEM). In her 13+ years at CEM, Mrs. Adams has directly supported multiple energy research programs at CEM, including grid solutions and hydrogen energy systems. Mrs. Adams has authored multiple hydrogen policy papers and manages media features for CEM, including the Hydrogen ProtoHub, a first-of-its-kind hydrogen research facility and currently the only publicly available hydrogen fueling station in Texas.

Mrs. Adams has also been foundational to the development of the International Center for Hydrogen Innovation (ICHI) and the Hydrogen ProtoHub’s Industrial Affiliates Program.  She also leads CEM’s Hydrogen Vehicle Ride Share Program. Through marketing efforts and community outreach, Mrs. Adams is actively advocating for a hydrogen energy economy in Texas. She looks forward to one day trading in her Tesla for a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle.

Andrew is an accomplished entrepreneur and process chemist with over 25 years of experience as a founder, executive, and visionary leader in the complex chemical manufacturing industry. He has overseen cutting-edge R&D and managed multi-site chemistry manufacturing operations. Andrew holds a bachelor‘s degree in chemistry and biochemistry from La Salle University and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Florida. Prior to founding Aternium, Andrew co-founded Adesis in 2005, which was later acquired by Universal Display Corporation (NASDAQ: OLED) in 2016. He continued with the company for a decade, contributing to significant growth. His unique combination of entrepreneurial drive, strategic leadership, and deep expertise in chemical manufacturing positions Aternium for long-term success. 

Dr. Mojdeh Delshad, a research professor in the Hildebrand Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin and member of the GeoH2 research consortium at the Bureau of Economic Geology. She is a leading expert in modeling underground hydrogen storage (UHS) in saline aquifers and depleted oil and gas reservoirs. Her extensive modeling and simulation work since 2020 focuses on the thermodynamic behavior, fluid dynamics, and operational optimization required to safely store hydrogen in the subsurface.

Richard Fenza is the Senior Project Owner for Air Liquide, leading a multi-billion-dollar portfolio of world-scale hydrogen infrastructure investments across North America. With over 25 years of executive and operational leadership experience, he previously served as Director of Operations in both Texas and Saudi Arabia, overseeing more than a dozen hydrogen plants—including the world’s largest in Saudi Arabia—as well as major pipelines and the world’s largest hydrogen storage cavern. Richard has spearheaded strategic hydrogen initiatives focused on low-carbon priorities, pipeline expansions, and developing the next generation of world scale hydrogen facilities. A member of the Texas Hydrogen Production Policy Council since its 2024 founding, he holds an MBA from the Wharton School of Business and a Mechanical Engineering degree from Carnegie Mellon University. He is based in Houston.

Brian A. Korgel is the Rashid Engineering Regents Chair Professor in the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin (UT) and director of UT’s Energy Institute. He directs the Center for a Solar Powered Future (SPF2050)—an Industry/University Research Center (IUCRC) funded by the National Science Foundation—and the Clean Energies area in the UT|Portugal program. He works on nano & mesoscopic materials chemistry and complex fluids, tackling problems in energy storage, chemical transformations, energy harvesting and conversion, and medicine. He is also an artist exploring collaborative frameworks, language and human-artificial intelligence/robot cohabitation, with a courtesy appointment as Professor in Art & Art History. He has published more than 300 papers, co-founded two companies, Innovalight and Piñon Technologies, and received various honors including the Professional Progress Award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and election into the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). 

Michael Lewis is the Director of the Center for Electromechanics (CEM) at The University of Texas at Austin. CEM’s mission is to transition Power and Energy Solutions into Products and Students into Leaders by providing a collaborative R&D environment where academia, government, and industry can come together to develop system-level power and energy solutions.

Mr. Lewis has nearly 30 years of experience in advanced research and technology development. Over the past two decades, he has led CEM’s efforts in alternative fuels and renewable energy for transportation and stationary power applications, including hydrogen power and energy systems. His team has developed, built, and tested fuel cell hybrid vehicles and investigated other novel hydrogen energy system solutions, including hydrogen production, storage, and compression. Mr. Lewis currently runs the university’s Hydrogen ProtoHub, a first-of-its-kind hydrogen technology R&D facility, and is a co-investigator for the university’s role in the HyVelocity hydrogen hub.

Professor Hisanori Nei is the President and CEO, Japan Underground Oil Storage Co. Ltd which manage about 10% of SPR in Japan with underground storage facilities. 

He was a Professor at National Graduate Institute of Policy Studies (GRIPS) since 2014 after over three decades of experience in energy and technology policies at METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry). He still works at GRIPS as Professor Emeritus and Adjunct Professor for Energy Policy since April 2024. 

Professor Nei joined the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) in 1981 after graduating from University of Tokyo. At MITI, he served various positions in Japan and overseas, and dedicated his career mainly to energy policies. It includes Executive Director of JETRO Houston from 1997 to 2000. 

At METI, he also worked as the director of Middle East and Africa Office, Petroleum Refining and Reserve Division, as well as director of Nuclear Inspection Division at the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA). 

When Tohoku off- Pacific Earthquake hit the Fukushima-Daiichi, TEPCO, in 2011, he worked more with U.S. mission and coordinated the Government Official Report to the IAEA.

 His key research areas are energy policy, nuclear safety policy and the relationship between nuclear development and natural gas market in Asia. Professor Nei has been working to build an effective business ecosystem to encourage clean energy system new ventures including hydrogen, CCS and new nuclear technologies such as fusion.

Joaquin Resasco was born in Mar del Plata, Argentina. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, under the guidance of Prof. Alex Bell, and was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with Prof. Phil Christopher. Since 2021, Joaquin has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Joaquin has received the DOE Early Career Award, the NSF CAREER Award, the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers Young Investigator Award, and the ACS PRF Doctoral New Investigator Award. He is a part of the Forbes 30 Under 30, AIChE’s 35 Under 35, and AIChE’s Pioneers in Chemical & Reaction Engineering.

Dr. Saleh is a Research Consultant at the Bureau of Economic Geology and a Professor of Practice at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, both at the University of Texas at Austin. He was a faculty member at Rice University for two years before joining UT-Austin. Prior to joining Rice, Dr. Saleh worked at Shell International E&P Inc. for 27 years, first as a Research Engineer and later as General Manager of the Integrated Geoscience program in R&D. His research interests span the applications of advanced signal processing, control theory, and machine learning methods to a wide variety of Earth Science problems. Most recently, he has been Principal Investigator of a project for assessing the geologic hydrogen and helium resource potential in Texas. Dr. Saleh received a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1991. 

Dr. Meng Tao is a professor of electrical engineering at Arizona State University. His research focuses on clean energy technologies. It covers a wide range of topics from materials and devices to systems and applications. Current research projects include recycling technologies for solar panels; solar systems for green hydrogen production, electric vehicle charging, and power management in microgrids; and molten-salt electrorefining for solar-grade silicon. For the last two decades, he has been promoting clean energy at the national and global levels, including the initiation and launch of the US Photovoltaic Manufacturing Consortium in 2011 and the Global Hydrogen Production Technologies Center in 2023. Dr. Tao was a Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Alternative Energy at Chalmers University of Technology, an International Fellow at Adelaide University, and a visiting professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Andy Uhler has spent most of his adult life on public radio, first reporting for KUT, Austin’s NPR affiliate and later as a national sustainability correspondent at American Public Media’s Marketplace. In 2023, Andy assumed the role of Energy Journalism Fellow at UT’s Energy Institute. He's now the Energy Reporter-in-Residence and produces a podcast about the energy transition and expansion throughout the Lone Star State called Phases And Stages: The Texas Energy Story.

Andy has a Master’s degree in global policy studies from the LBJ School of Public Affairs. He continues to report for KUT, NPR, BBC, among others.

Haibin Xu is a senior advisor to the CTO at Technip Energies, and an Executive in Residence at UT Austin. He has held technical and leadership positions for 24 years in upstream oil and gas, innovation, corporate strategy, and venture investment. Previously he was Global General Manager Shell Research Alliance, a member of the Shell Science Council, and a co-founder and the founding director of GCxN, an award-winning global cleantech incubator as a partnership between Shell and the National Lab of Rockies (NLR). He is the 2026 President-Elect of the Asian American Academy of Science and Engineering (AAASE). He has a passion for mentoring early career professionals and has delivered a TEDx talk on career growth. Haibin holds a Ph.D. in Geophysics from Stanford University.