Next Frontiers in Energy Storage

Dr Fanny Bardé is a French entrepreneur based in Belgium, with a distinguished career spanning industry, research and innovation leadership. She holds a PhD in Material Science and initially joined Duracell in Boston.

Dr Bardé spent 14 years at Toyota Motor Europe as Technical Manager for R&D – Advanced Technology, where she played a pivotal role in shaping the future of electric vehicle batteries. Her leadership extended beyond project management to strategic oversight, guiding Toyota Europe’s battery technology roadmap.

Following her tenure at Toyota, she joined imec, where she led the Solid-State Battery Programme and managed multi-million-euro projects funded through both commercial and European channels.

In 2022, she co-founded SOLiTHOR, a next-generation solid-state battery company, where she currently serves as Chief Technology Officer. Under her technical leadership, SOLiTHOR has grown to a diverse team of 34 members representing 20 nationalities.
Dr Bardé is the co-author of 31 patent applications, 36 peer-reviewed publications, and one book chapter. Her contributions to innovation were recently recognised with 3rd place in the ‘Women Innovators’ category of the European Prize for Women Innovators.

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Professor Yet-Ming Chiang’s research aims to design, synthesize, and characterize advanced materials and devices for use in clean energy technologies, including low-carbon transportation, grid-scale electrical energy storage, and sustainable manufacturing. His group studies electrochemical storage materials and devices. Other focuses are electrochemical processes for the decarbonization of materials production and the mining, separation, and recovery of elements from various feedstocks. Projects center on novel conduction mechanisms in solid electrolytes, solid-state batteries, batteries for electric aviation, low-cost highly scalable grid storage batteries, decarbonization of cement production, and electrochemical mining of ashes and other wastes.

Professor Chiang earned a BS in materials science and engineering from MIT in 1980 and a doctorate in ceramics from MIT in 1985. Today, his laboratory’s work ranges from basic research to process and prototype development. He has brought several laboratory discoveries to commercialization, including high-power lithium iron phosphate batteries, more efficient lithium-ion battery manufacturing processes, batteries for long-duration grid storage, and electrochemical cement production. He co-directs a flagship project under MIT Climate Grand Challenges on the decarbonization of industrial materials production. Professor Chiang is a Fellow of the Electrochemical Society, Materials Research Society, American Ceramic Society, and National Academy of Inventors.

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Jürgen Janek is full professor for Physical Chemistry at Justus Liebig University in Giessen (JLU), Germany, director of the JLU Center for Materials Research and Scientific Director of the BELLA lab at KIT, Karlsruhe. He was visiting professor at Seoul National University (South Korea), Tohoku University (Sendai, Japan) and D’Aix-Marseille University (France), and has in 2025 become distinguished professor at Tohoku University in Sendai/Japan. He holds an honorary doctorate by TU Delft (Netherlands), is member of the Leopoldina – German National Academy of Sciences and was recently awarded with the first Greve Prize by Leopoldina. He holds numerous patents, has published about 600 peer-reviewed papers and got numerous awards. His research interests focus on the physical chemistry of inorganic solids, solid state ionics and reactivity, specifically on the properties of mixed ionic-electronic conductors, defect chemistry of ionic materials, kinetics of solid-state reactions and solid-solid interfaces. In recent years his research is focused strongly on the chemistry of battery materials, solid electrolytes and solid-state batteries and operando studies of batteries. He is scientific coordinator of the German Cluster of Competence for Solid State Batteries FestBatt funded by BMFTR (Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space) and one of the spokespersons of the DFG Cluster of Excellence POLiS at Ulm University, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and JLU Giessen.

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