Precourt Institute for Energy
Showing 141-150 of 165 Results
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Maksim Sonin
Hydrogen Projects Fellow, Precourt Institute for Energy
BioDr. Maksim Sonin is an energy executive and thought leader, known for his work on humanitarian and global sustainability concerns. He drives strategic global investments and executes large-scale capital developments worth over $15B per project, from inception to operation across major sectors and geographies, from the Arctic to the desert, with teams spanning 5 continents.
Dr. Sonin has held executive roles and served on the Boards of UCC (with a $10B+ capital projects portfolio), Silleno ($7B+ world-scale petrochemical complex, 1250 kta), KMG Petrochem ($2B+ gas treatment plant, 9 BCMA), and other organizations, focusing on humanitarian and global energy concerns. This includes leading the development of the world’s largest plants for producing ammonia and urea, with the highest capacity per train. He has worked with Chevron, Shell, and ExxonMobil in consortium venture and collaborated with other global players.
Holding an MS in Management from Stanford University as a Sloan Fellow, a PhD in Engineering, and an MS in Finance from different institutions, Dr.Sonin's academic achievements are further complemented by distinguished certifications in his field. He is a Projects Fellow at Stanford's Precourt Institute for Energy, an elected Fellow (FEI) of the Energy Institute (UK), and a member of both a member of the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council and the Stanford Hydrogen Initiative, .
Recent / Coming speaking engagements:
• Global Hydrogen Leaders, S&P Global(May’24)
• Reuters Events, Energy (September’24)
• Stanford Ammonia Symposium (October ’24)
• Global Clean Hydrogen (November ’24)
• S&P Global, World Hydrogen (March ’25)
• Argus, Clean Ammonia (April ’25)
• 5th American Hydrogen Forum, Houston (May ’25)
• The Energy Projects, EPC Show (June ’25)
• Carbon Capture Technology Expo North America (June ’25)
• Hydrogen Technology North America Expo (June ’25)
• Green Hydrogen Summit, Seattle (September ’25)
• Experience Power (EP) week, Denver. A POWER magazine Advisory Board Member (Oct-Nov ’25)
• American EPC Projects Forum (November’ 25)
• American Data Centers & AI (November’ 25)
• Global Sustainable Energies. Milan. (December’ 25)
• E-Fuels Summit 2025 (December’ 25)
• Polymers & Materials Congress. Japan (March’ 26)
• Energy Projects Conference | EPC Expo (June’ 26). Advisory Board
Selected interviews:
1. Nikkei BP (Savior of data centers, green hydrogen made from offshore wind power will save Japan's power shortage)
2. S&P Global ( Datacenters balancing sustainability goals with accelerating AI demand)
3. IBM (Can nuclear power fuel AI's growing energy needs?)
4. Power Magazine (Power Demand from Data Centres Keeping Coal-Fired Plants Online; Central Theme for Energy’s Future: Decentralizing Power Generation):
5. The Epoch Times (EIA Forecasts US Fuel Stockpiles Headed for 25-Year Low by 2026; AI Data Center Build-Out Raises Concerns About America’s Future Power Needs)
6. ReadWrite (How AI Will Soon Disrupt the Greater Energy Industry)
7. Mashable (Ammonia Could Play a Key Role In Creating a Low-Carbon Energy System)
8. Inc.com (Building a Sustainable Future: How Companies Can Make a Positive Impact
9. Investing.com (a Global, Low-Carbon Economy Isn’t as Far-Fetched as Many Might Think
10. International Business Times (Why Leaders Can't Be Afraid to Push Boundaries)
11. PMI PM Network (Cold Rush: Tapping the Arctic's Frozen Assets Starts with Navigating Extreme Risks) -
Andrew Spakowitz
Senior Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Affairs, Professor of Chemical Engineering, of Materials Science and Engineering and, by courtesy, of Applied Physics
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsTheory and computation of biological processes and complex materials
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Alfred M. Spormann
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and of Chemical Engineering, Emeritus
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMetabolism of anaerobic microbes in diseases, bioenergy, and bioremediation
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Jonathan Stebbins
Professor of Geological Sciences, Emeritus
Current Research and Scholarly Interestsstructure and dynamics of crystalline, glassy, and molten inorganic materials and how these relate to geologically and technologically important properties and processes; solid state Nuclear Magnetic Resoance (NMR); mineralogy; igneous petrology; glass science
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James Sweeney
Professor of Management Science & Engineering, Emeritus
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsDeterminants of energy efficiency opportunities, barriers, and policy options. Emphasis on behavioral issues, including personal, corporate, or organizational. Behavior may be motivated by economic incentives, social, or cultural factors, or more generally, by a combination of these factors. Systems analysis questions of energy use.
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Joel Swisher
Adjunct Professor
BioJoel N. Swisher, PhD, PE, is Consulting Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University, where he teaches graduate-level courses on greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation (covering technical and business strategies to manage GHG risks) and electric utility planning methods (covering supply and demand-side resources, resource integration and expansion planning). His current research at Stanford addresses the integration of plug-in vehicles with the power grid and the barriers and synergies related to metering, tariffs, load management, customer incentives, and charging infrastructure.
Dr. Swisher is also an independent consultant with over 30 years experience in research and consulting on many aspects of clean energy technology. He is an expert in energy efficiency technology and policy, carbon offsets and climate change mitigation, and electric utility resource planning and economics. He has consulted with numerous utilities, manufacturers and technology companies on resource planning, energy efficiency, vehicle electrification and clean energy deployment strategies. He has also helped consumer-oriented firms design strategies to expand simple cost-saving energy investment programs into brand-building corporate sustainability campaigns.
Dr. Swisher is a thought leader in several areas of clean energy technology and business strategy. As Director of Technical Services and CTO for Camco International, Dr. Swisher helped develop carbon offset projects in reforestation, agriculture, renewable energy and building energy efficiency, and he has authored emission inventories, baseline studies and monitoring and verification plans for multilateral banks and private offset buyers. Starting in 1989, Dr. Swisher performed seminal research on carbon offset baselines and technical and economic analysis of carbon offsets in the energy and land-use sectors.
Dr. Swisher was managing director of research and consulting at Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), where he led RMI’s consulting team in work for numerous high-profile clients, including electric utilities and producers of goods ranging from semiconductor chips to potato chips. At RMI, he created the concept of the Smart Garage, which explores the energy system synergies in which vehicle electrification helps enable zero-emission vehicles and a cleaner power grid. He led an RMI team that convened an industrial consortium (including Alcoa, Johnson Controls, Google, etc.) to develop a new, lightweight, plug-in hybrid vehicle platform for Class 2 truck fleet applications. Collaborating with the design firm IDEO to conduct interdisciplinary design workshops, the RMI team initiated a working design to attract funding and move toward production, which proceeded as a spin-off company, Bright Automotive in Indiana.
Dr. Swisher holds a Ph.D. in Energy and Environmental Engineering from Stanford University. He is a registered Professional Engineer and speaks five languages. He is author of over 100 professional publications including The New Business Climate: A Guide to Lower Carbon Emissions and Better Business Performance and a bilingual (English and Portuguese) textbook on energy efficiency program design and evaluation and integrated energy resource planning. -
Katie Taflan
Assistant Director, Explore Energy, Precourt Institute for Energy
Current Role at StanfordProgram Manager, Precourt Institute for Energy
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William Abraham Tarpeh
Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering, by courtesy, of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Center Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy and, by courtesy, at the Woods Institute for the Environment
BioReimagining liquid waste streams as resources can lead to recovery of valuable products and more efficient, less costly approaches to reducing harmful discharges to the environment. Pollutants in effluent streams can be captured and used as valuable inputs to other processes. For example, municipal wastewater contains resources like energy, water, nutrients, and metals. The Tarpeh Lab develops and evaluates novel approaches to resource recovery from “waste” waters at several synergistic scales: molecular mechanisms of chemical transport and transformation; novel unit processes that increase resource efficiency; and systems-level assessments that identify optimization opportunities. We employ understanding of electrochemistry, separations, thermodynamics, kinetics, and reactor design to preferentially recover resources from waste. We leverage these molecular-scale insights to increase the sustainability of engineered processes in terms of energy, environmental impact, and cost.
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Clyde Tatum
Obayashi Professor in the School of Engineering, Emeritus
BioTatum's teaching interests are construction engineering and technical construction. His research focuses on construction process knowledge and integration and innovation in construction.
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Hamdi Tchelepi
Max Steineke Professor and Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsCurrent research activities: (1) model and simulate unstable miscible and immiscible fluid flow in heterogeneous porous media, (2) develop multiscale numerical solution algorithms for coupled mechanics and multiphase fluid flow in large-scale subsurface formations, and (3) develop stochastic solution methods that quantify the uncertainty associated with predictions of fluid-structure dynamics in porous media.