Steven Chu is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Physics, of Molecular and Cellular Physiology, and of Energy Science and Engineering at Stanford University. He received an A.B. degree in mathematics and a B.S. degree in physics from the University of Rochester, and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Berkeley, he was at Bell Labs as a member of the technical staff in 1978 and then department head in 1983.

From January 2009 to April, 2013, Dr. Chu served as U.S. Secretary of Energy under President Barack Obama. During his tenure, he began several initiatives, including ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy), the Energy Innovation Hubs, and the Clean Energy Ministerial meetings. As the first scientist Cabinet member, Chu recruited dozens outstanding scientists and engineers to the Department of Energy, and was personally tasked by President Obama to help stop the BP Oil leak.

From 2004-2009, he was the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Professor of Physics and of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California Berkeley. Prior to those positions, he was the Theodore and Francis Geballe Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Stanford University. During this time, he helped start Bio-X, a multi-disciplinary initiative combining the physical and biological sciences with engineering and medicine.

His contributions include the introduction of laser cooling and optical trapping of atoms and particles, atomic fountain clocks and atom interferometers, the optical tweezers of biomolecules, and single molecule FRET of biomolecules tethered to surfaces. His current research is in biophysics, molecular and cellular physiology, medical imaging, nanoparticle synthesis and battery research. He has received many awards, including the 1997 Nobel Prize for laser cooling and optical trapping of atoms. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Inventors, and a foreign member of the Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Academia Sinica, the Korean Academy of Sciences and Technology and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

He received an A.B. degree in mathematics, and a B.S. degree in physics from the University of Rochester, and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, and 35 honorary degrees.

With a PhD in engineering, Wan Gang is President of the 10th National Committee of the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST).

Wan Gang graduated with a bachelor's degree from Northeast Forestry University in 1978. From 1979 to 1981, he was a postgraduate in experimental mechanics at the Structural Theories Research Institute of Tongji University, where he got his master's degree in 1981 and served as a faculty member till 1985. Between 1985 and 1991, he studied and obtained doctorate (Dr. Ing.) at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Technical University Clausthal in Germany. From 1991 to 2001, he worked in German Audi Corporation.

In January 2001, he took the post as Dean of the New Energy Automobile Engineering Center, Tongji University. He worked successively as Assistant to President of Tongji University from 2001, Vice President from 2003, and President from 2004. In December 2006, he became Vice Chairman of the China Zhi Gong Party and was elected Chairman in December 2007. In April 2007, he was appointed as Minister of Science and Technology. He was elected Vice Chairman of the 11th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) in March 2008 and that of the 12th CPPCC and 13th CPPCC respectively in 2013 and in 2018.

In June 2016, Wan Gang was elected President of the National Committee of CAST and re-elected in May 2021.

Rodi Guidero serves as Executive Director of Breakthrough Energy, leading the organization that encompasses all of Bill Gates’ climate and energy work. As part of these responsibilities, Rodi also serves as Managing Partner of Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a collection of funds and a division of Breakthrough Energy. He remains part of Bill’s private office, where he manages Bill’s interests in strategic personal investments and business relationships.

Previously, Rodi worked at BMGI (now Cascade Investment), the investment office that manages Bill’s assets and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust. In this role, he focused on Bill’s investments in early-stage technology companies and venture capital funds. Earlier in his career, Rodi served as the general counsel for two Silicon Valley-based venture capital firms.

Rodi holds a J.D. from Stanford Law School and a B.A. from the University of Washington.

Tom is the co-executive chair of Galvanize Climate Solutions, a multi-strategy climate investment firm designed to unlock the generational opportunity of the energy transition. Central to the firm’s thesis is the belief of an absolute, unequivocal need to win in the marketplace with clean products and services that are cheaper, faster, and better.

In 1986, he founded Farallon Capital Management, a San Francisco-based hedge fund that pioneered the multi-strategy approach to investing. At the time of its founding as a risk arbitrage firm, Farallon had less than $10M in assets. Under Tom’s leadership, the firm expanded into multiple new strategies and geographies and grew to $36B in assets. During this time, Tom also served as a partner and member of the Executive Committee at Hellman & Friedman, a San Francisco–based private equity firm. In 2012, Tom left both roles in order to give his time, money, and energy to fight for climate issues.

Before California firmly established itself as a leader in climate policy, Tom worked to help make it the largest jurisdiction in the world with a 100% clean energy law and prevented the oil and gas industry’s effort to roll back the state’s climate protections. Around that time, he also cofounded Beneficial State Bank, a triple bottom line community development bank dedicated to economic justice and environmental sustainability.

In 2013, he founded NextGen America (fka NextGen Climate), the largest youth voter engagement organization in American history, which has registered over 1.5 million young voters over the last 10 years. NextGen is credited with not only helping to drive record numbers of young voters to the polls in the 2020 US presidential election, but also for its influence in making climate a significant issue on ballots.

Tom is also the founder of NextGen Policy, a California-based policy organization focused on climate, environmental, social, and economic legislative advocacy and civic engagement. In 2022, the organization helped navigate 26 bills through the legislative process that were signed into law. Over the last two years, the organization has helped to secure nearly $60 billion in the state budget to support organizational priorities.

Most recently, Tom was a Democratic candidate in the 2020 presidential election. Later that year, he served as co-chair for California Governor Gavin Newsom's Business and Jobs Recovery Task Force. In addition, he co-chaired Vice President Biden's Climate Engagement Advisory Council to help mobilize climate voters.

Liane Randolph has spent most of her career in public service, specializing in environmental law and policy, effective administration, and a commitment to transparency and public process. She was appointed Chair of the California Air Resources Board by Governor Gavin Newsom in December 2020. As Chair, Randolph presides over the Board’s decisions alongside her fellow Board Members and works closely with the Executive Officer to oversee CARB’s work. Randolph also meets frequently with CARB's many partners and stakeholders and represents CARB on the local, national, and international stage.During her time as Chair, CARB has expanded its focus on equity issues and solutions, and the Board has adopted landmark climate and environmental policies, including the 2022 Scoping Plan laying out California’s path to carbon neutrality by 2045, and regulations that will accelerate the transition to a zero-emission transportation system.

Prior to her work at CARB,Randolph served as a Commissioner at the California Public Utilities Commission from 2015 to 2021 and managed numerous decisions on energy efficiency, integrated energy resource planning, and regulation of transportation network companies, as well as spearheading significant Commission policy reforms. Prior to the PUC, Randolph served from 2011 to 2014 as Deputy Secretary and General Counsel at the California Natural Resources Agency, where she worked on a wide variety of legal and policy issues, including work on the Klamath Dam Removal agreement, CEQA guidelines, and the Agency’s first Tribal Consultation Policy. Randolph’s first role with the State was as Chair of the California Fair Political Practices Commission from 2003 to 2007. Her work at the state level builds on experience with local government that she gained while practicing municipal law as a contract City Attorney for Suisun City and San Leandro. Randolph earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law and lives in Oakland with her husband and family. In her spare time, she enjoys hiking, running, and reading.

Dr. Arun Majumdar is the inaugural Dean of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. He is the Jay Precourt Provostial Chair Professor at Stanford University, a faculty member of the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Energy Science and Engineering, a Senior Fellow and former Director of the Precourt Institute for Energy and Senior Fellow (courtesy) of the Hoover Institution. He is also a faculty in Department of Photon Science at SLAC.

In October 2009, Dr. Majumdar was nominated by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate to become the Founding Director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E), where he served until June 2012 and helped ARPA-E become a model of excellence and innovation for the government with bipartisan support from Congress and other stakeholders. Between March 2011 and June 2012, he also served as the Acting Under Secretary of Energy, enabling the portfolio of Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Office of Electricity Delivery and Reliability, Office of Nuclear Energy and the Office of Fossil Energy, as well as multiple cross-cutting efforts such as Sunshot, Grid Modernization Team and others that he had initiated. Furthermore, he was a Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Energy, Dr. Steven Chu, on a variety of matters related to management, personnel, budget, and policy. In 2010, he served on Secretary Chu's Science Team to help stop the leak of the Deep Water Horizon (BP) oil spill.

Dr. Majumdar serves as the Chair of the Advisory Board of the US Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm. He led the Agency Review Team for the Department of Energy, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission during the Biden-Harris Presidential transition. He served as the Vice Chairman of the Advisory Board of US Secretary of Energy, Dr. Ernest Moniz, and was also a Science Envoy for the US Department of State with focus on energy and technology innovation in the Baltics and Poland. He also serves on numerous advisory boards and boards of businesses, investment groups and non-profit organizations.

After leaving Washington, DC and before joining Stanford, Dr. Majumdar was the Vice President for Energy at Google, where he assembled a team to create technologies and businesses at the intersection of data, computing and electricity grid.

Dr. Majumdar is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, US National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His research in the past has involved the science and engineering of nanoscale materials and devices, especially in the areas of energy conversion, transport and storage as well as biomolecular analysis. His current research focuses on redox reactions and systems that are fundamental to a sustainable energy future, multidimensional nanoscale imaging and microscopy, and an effort to leverage modern AI techniques to develop and deliver energy and climate solutions.

Prior to joining the Department of Energy, Dr. Majumdar was the Almy & Agnes Maynard Chair Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering at University of California–Berkeley and the Associate Laboratory Director for energy and environment at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He also spent the early part of his academic career at Arizona State University and University of California, Santa Barbara.

Dr. Majumdar received his bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in 1985 and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989.

Professor Laughlin is a theorist with interests ranging from hard-core engineering to cosmology. He is an expert in semiconductors (Nobel Prize 1998) and has also worked on plasma and nuclear physics issues related to fusion and nuclear-pumped X-ray lasers. His technical work at the moment focuses on “correlated-electron” phenomenology – working backward from experimental properties of materials to infer the presence (or not) of new kinds of quantum self-organization. He recently proposed that all Mott insulators – including the notorious doped ones that exhibit high-temperature superconductivity – are plagued by a new kind of subsidiary order called “orbital antiferromagnetism” that is difficult to detect directly. He is also the author of A Different Universe, a lay-accessible book explaining emergent

Professor Yi Cui is the Director of Staford Precourt Institute for Energy and Faculty Director of the Sustainability Accelerator,

Cui’s research focuses on the fundamentals of nanomaterials and their applications in batteries, catalysts, wearables, carbon capture, mineral extraction, and environmental technology. He has founded five companies to commercialize technologies developed by his research group.

Cui has published approximately 550 research papers and has an outstanding H-index impact score of 251 (Google Scholar). In 2014, he was ranked No. 1 in materials science by Thomson Reuters’ “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds.” In 2022, Cui became an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Materials Research Society, Electrochemical Society, and the Royal Society of Chemistry. He is an associate editor of Nano Letters. He is a co-director of the Battery 500 Consortium, and co-director of Stanford’s StorageX Initiative. His selected awards include the Global Energy Prize (2021), U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Award (2020), Materials Research Society Medal (2020), and Blavatnik National Laureate (2017).

Carla J. Peterman is Executive Vice President, Corporate Affairs and Chief Sustainability Officer for PG&E Corporation, the parent company of Pacific Gas and Electric Company.

Peterman has spent her career focused on California's energy policy and regulatory landscape. At PG&E, she oversees the company's regulatory, legislative, sustainability, and charitable strategies, all focused on delivering for the customers and communities that PG&E serves in Northern and Central California.

Prior to joining PG&E in 2021, Peterman served as Senior Vice President of Strategy and Regulatory Affairs at Southern California Edison. Before that she served a six-year term as a Commissioner of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).

A steadfast proponent of clean energy, at the CPUC Peterman led the adoption of the first utility energy storage mandate in the country, the approval of nearly $1 billion of utility investments in electric vehicle charging infrastructure, the adoption of utility energy efficiency goals and business plans, and the implementation of California's Renewables Portfolio Standard.

Before her CPUC appointment, Peterman served on the California Energy Commission, where she was the lead commissioner for renewables, transportation, and natural gas. She also is a former board member of The Utility Reform Network, an organization that represents consumers before the CPUC and California Legislature.

In 2019, Governor Newsom appointed her to chair the Commission on Catastrophic Wildfire Cost and Recovery. She currently serves as a member of the Federal Reserve of San Francisco Economic Advisory Council. She has also served on various other boards, including the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC), NARUC's Energy Resources and Environment Committee (Vice-Chair), and the external advisory board for Sandia National Laboratories’ Energy and Homeland Security Portfolio.

Peterman holds a BA from Howard University, a PhD in energy and resources from the University of California, Berkeley, and MS and MBA degrees from Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar.
 

Xiangyang Li, the current President of State Grid Corporation of China US Rep Office, is in charge of SGCC international business cooperation within North America region, covering the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

Before 2023, Xiangyang is the Vice President of International Cooperation Department of SGCC headquarter which is based at Beijing, China. He was in charge of business communication between SGCC and international organizations, including government agencies, public utilities, industry partners, academic groups, etc. He was also supervising the business operation of eleven SGCC overseas offices which are located globally.

Xiangyang has organized over 50 international business activities and led his team to strengthen the relationship between SGCC and international organizations such as WEF, IRENA and CIGRE. 

He also had been serving as external director of China Electric Power and Equipment & Technology Co., Ltd., the subordinate EPC company of SGCC, with total asset of $4 billion. 

1999, Xiangyang Li got his doctoral degree in Tsinghua University with excellent performance.
 

Physicist Amory Lovins (1947– ) is cofounder (1982) and chairman emeritus of RMI, which he served as chief scientist 2007–19 and now supports as a contractor and trustee; energy advisor to major firms and governments in 70+ countries for 45+ years; author of 31 books and more than 700 papers; and an integrative designer of superefficient buildings, factories, and vehicles.

To see his latest work and some of his classics, visit Inside Amory’s Brain.

He has received the Blue Planet, Volvo, Zayed, Onassis, Nissan, Shingo, and Mitchell Prizes, the MacArthur and Ashoka Fellowships, the Happold, Benjamin Franklin, and Spencer Hutchens Medals, 12 honorary doctorates, and the Heinz, Lindbergh, Right Livelihood (“alternative Nobel”), National Design, and World Technology Awards. In 2016, the President of Germany awarded him the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit (Bundesverdienstkreuz 1. Klasse).

A Harvard and Oxford dropout and former Oxford don, he’s an honorary US architect, Swedish engineering academician, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (UK). He has taught at ten universities, most recently the Naval Postgraduate School (Professor of Practice 2011–17) and Stanford University, where he’s currently Adjunct Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and a Scholar of the Precourt Institute for Energy—but only teaching topics he’s never formally studied, so as to retain beginner’s mind. He served in 2011–18 on the National Petroleum Council and has advised the US Departments of Energy and Defense.

Time has named him one of the world’s 100 most influential people, and Foreign Policy, one of the 100 top global thinkers. His latest books, mostly coauthored, include Natural Capitalism (1999, www.natcap.org), Small Is Profitable (2002, www.smallisprofitable.org), Winning the Oil Endgame (2004, www.oilendgame.com), The Essential Amory Lovins (2011), and Reinventing Fire (2011, www.reinventingfire.com).

His main recent efforts include supporting RMI’s collaborative synthesis, for China’s National Development and Reform Commission, of an ambitious efficiency-and-renewables trajectory that informed the 13th Five Year Plan; helping the Government of India design transformational mobility; and exploring how to make integrative design the new normal, so investments to energy efficiency can yield increasing rather than diminishing returns.

His avocations include fine-art mountain and landscape photography (www.judyhill.com), writing, music, linguistics, great-ape language and conservation, and Taoism.

The availability of low-cost but intermittent renewable electricity (e.g., derived from solar and wind) underscores the grand challenge to store and dispatch energy so that it is available when and where it is needed. Redox-active materials promise the efficient transformation between electrical, chemical, and thermal energy, and are at the heart of carbon-neutral energy cycles. Understanding design rules that govern materials chemistry and architecture holds the key towards rationally optimizing technologies such as batteries, fuel cells, electrolyzers, and novel thermodynamic cycles. Electrochemical and chemical reactions involved in these technologies span diverse length and time scales, ranging from Ångströms to meters and from picoseconds to years. As such, establishing a unified, predictive framework has been a major challenge. The central question unifying our research is: “can we understand and engineer redox reactions at the levels of electrons, ions, molecules, particles and devices using a bottom-up approach?” Our approach integrates novel synthesis, fabrication, characterization, modeling and analytics to understand molecular pathways and interfacial structure, and to bridge fundamentals to energy storage and conversion technologies by establishing new design rules.

Dr. Dai has played a significant role leading California’s collaboration with China on climate, energy and environment. She was appointed by Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr as Special Advisor on China. Under Brown, Dr. Dai chaired the state’s China Interagency Working Group, and acted as the state’s liaison on its critical economic and environmental initiatives on China. Previously, Dr. Dai served as senior advisor at California Environmental Protection Agency and California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, advising on the state’s international policy and global climate partnership. In 2017, she organized Governor Brown’s trip, which resulted in a successful meeting with President Xi Jinping and the commitment to establish the California-China Climate Institute.

Dr. Dai is a graduate of Berkeley Law, University of California, and holds a doctoral degree on Environmental Policy and Economics from State University of New York. Her research has been focused on market mechanisms for climate change mitigation, energy efficiency and innovations.

As the Managing Director of the Bits & Watts Initiative at Stanford University, Dr. Liang Min leads a multidisciplinary affiliates program that brings together experts from various fields to drive the digital transformation of the electric grid. Under his leadership, Bits & Watts launched new research areas: 100% Clean Electric Grid, EV50, AI for Climate/Energy, and Digital Grid – an open platform for customer DERs integration. In addition to his role at Bits & Watts, Dr. Min is the Managing Director of the newly established Net-Zero Alliance, which provides a platform for global companies to collaborate with Stanford on research and education focused on achieving a net-zero future. He also spearheaded the launch of the Stanford Energy Executive Education Program, designed to equip industry leaders with the knowledge and skills to navigate the evolving energy landscape.

Dr. Min's career began at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), where he was a senior project manager and significantly contributed to improving the electric grid's reliability and security. His work resulted in multiple U.S. patents for deploying phasor measurement unit technologies at utilities, supported by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. He then spent a decade at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he served as the founding group leader of the energy delivery group and associate program leader for the national lab's cyber and infrastructure resilience program. He has also served as Research Director of the Electric Operations program for the California Energy System for the 21st Century, an initiative to apply the country's most sophisticated high-performance computing technology to enhance California's grid reliability, security, and value to ratepayers.

Mr. Hong is a Senior Scientist and Deputy Director for Research of the Building Technology and Urban Systems Division of the US DOE Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He established and leads the Urban Systems Group (UrbanSystems.lbl.gov). Before joining LBNL, he worked for Architectural Energy Corporation (now Noresco) in San Francisco, Supersymmetry in Singapore, National University of Singapore, and Tsinghua University, China.

Mr. Hong has more than 30 years of industry and academic experience in building energy efficiency, building energy standards, building performance simulation, urban systems, and occupant behavior in buildings. He is a key member of the team that developed building energy code and standards for California, ASHRAE, and India. He was the chief developer and product manager of VisualDOE version 4.0 – a comprehensive user interface to DOE-2.1E. He was the founding developer of DeST (former BTP) – a building simulation program used in China. He leads the EnergyPlus development at LBNL. He developed new and enhanced modeling capabilities of EnergyPlus and carried research to improve the usability of EnergyPlus for adoption in California Title 24 energy code. He leads the development of two building energy software which won two R&D 100 Awards (CBES in 2019 and CityBES in 2022). CityBES is an open data and computing platform for city buildings, energy, and sustainability.

Mr. Hong is an editor of Energy and Buildings, an IBPSA Fellow, an ASHRAE Fellow, a Highly Cited Researcher, a former member of IBPSA-USA board of directors and panel leader of ACEEE Summer Study conferences, and co-chair of 2026 ACEEE Summer Study on energy efficiency in buildings.

Mr. Hong contributed to the International Energy Agency's research programs (Annex 21, 53, 66, 79, and 81). He led IEA EBC Annex 66, focusing on describing and modeling behaviors of building occupants to study their impacts on building energy performance and support the design and operation of buildings. He led projects under the 10-year US.-China Clean Energy Research Center for building energy efficiency. He established and chaired (Jan 2016 to June 2024) ASHRAE Technical Committee 7.10 Occupant Behavior in Building Design and Operation.