This is the text version of the 2016 Annual Merit Review and Peer Evaluation Meeting Plenary – Awards Ceremony video. Fuel Cell Technologies Office Director Sunita Satyapal and Vehicle Technologies Office Acting Director Christy Cooper presented awards at the 2016 DOE Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Program and Vehicle Technologies Office Annual Merit Review and Peer Evaluation Meeting.
Sunita Satyapal:
So now in the interest of time, I'm actually gonna go straight to the next part of the program. And I think you'll all be very pleased to hear that you are not gonna have to sit through any lunchtime presentations this year. I'm surprised there's no applause but we still – [Laughter] [Applause]
But we will still have a working lunch and – because you do get a free lunch, remember? But nothing's free, so stay tuned for that. You'll hear more about it tomorrow at the last session before lunch. So what we're gonna do now is present the awards. But before I begin, I'd like to recognize all of our PIs and collaborators for all their efforts over the past year. There really are so many incredible individuals who are part of our program and each year we can only recognize a few who've made outstanding contributions.
So I'll start now and if you hear your name, please come up to the stage to receive your award from Deputy Assistant Secretary Reuben Sarkar. And so since the stage is not as big as we thought, we will I guess make room up here. And once you receive your award, please stay on the stage until all the office winners are announced so that we can take the photograph of all the winners together.
And we'll try to go quickly. So the first Distinguished Achievement Award for their outstanding leadership in the development and deployment of the world's first HyStEP device and for efforts to enable widespread commercialization of hydrogen infrastructure goes to the H2FIRST team including Joe Pratt and Terry Johnson from Sandia, and Chris Ainscough and Danny Terlip from NREL. I know Terry's unable to be here today, but please would Joe, Chris, and Danny please come up? And let's give them a round of applause. [Applause]
And next I would like to recognize the outstanding contributions over the years to fuel cell market research and publication of our widely read annual reports. I show slides all the time from these two, Jen Gangi and Sandra Curtin, formerly from the U.S. Fuel Cell Council, now at the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association. Are Jen and Sandy here? [Applause]
Okay, please come up. Oh, great. The hardest part is to get people to come to this event and so we have to make up all sorts of excuses and hope they stay because it's a surprise. And then finally a special recognition award for outstanding dedication and contributions just in the last year in developing the H2 at Scale national-lab-wide Big Idea goes to Bryan Pivovar of NREL and the H2 at Scale Team. This was a really heavy lift over the year with so many labs and so many PIs involved so we'd like to ask if Bryan can please come up and receive the award on behalf of the entire time. Thanks. [Applause]
So now as we're taking – yeah, I guess so we'll have to – oops – take the photos. Now I'll turn it over to Christy as she goes through the VTO awards.
Christy Cooper:
Okay, great. Thank you, Sunita. So I'm very happy to announce this year's award winners for the Vehicle Technologies Office. As Sunita said, it's always really hard to choose among the extremely talented individuals that we work with over the course of the year or many years. But I'm really happy to be able to announce and recognize a few of them here today. So let's see if this works.
First, I'd like to recognize Dick Peterson who you can't see on this slide, but there's some delay here. There we go. Dick Peterson of General Motors with a Lifetime Distinguished Achievement Award for his many years and significant contributions to the U.S. DRIVE ACEC or Advanced Combustion and Emission Control Technical Team. I don't think that Dick is here today so I'd like to invite Arun Solomon to come up and receive this award on his behalf. [Applause]
We'd also like to recognize Eric Heim from the United States Advanced Battery Consortium or USABC with a Lifetime Distinguished Achievement Award for his exemplary service and execution of DOE-USABC R&D agreements that have successfully developed nickel metal hydride and lithium-ion battery technology for electric vehicles. Eric, would you please come up? [Applause]
And then this one, I am personally very happy to present the next two awards to two individuals for their contributions to our government industry partnerships. And the first one, I think I know he's gonna be surprised because he didn't know he was here for this, is Mike Martin for his longstanding personal commitment and significant contribution to successful DOE and USCAR collaboration through all the way back to the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles through the FreedomCAR & Fuel Partnership and today's U.S. DRIVE Partnership.
And then the second award – [Applause] is to Natalie Olds for her longstanding personal commitment and significant contributions to successful DOE and USCAR collaboration through FreedomCAR & Fuel Partnership and U.S. DRIVE Partnership. Natalie, would you come up? Thank you. [Applause]
And then our last VTO award, we would like to recognize the team at Volvo with a Distinguished Achievement Award for exceeding the requirements of their SuperTruck Project, and I'd like to invite Pascal Amar to come up and accept this award on behalf of the Volvo team. [Applause]
There we go. And now I think I'm turning it back over to Sunita to announce the Fuel Cell Technologies Office subprogram award winners.
Sunita Satyapal:
So those were the office-wide awards. And so now what we're gonna do again so that, in the interest of time, is we'll announce each award winner and then we will ask that you hold your applause until we finish announcing all the winners and then we'll have the awardees stand and then we'll be taking the photos during the break.
So first I'm pleased to announce – besides the blank screen – there we go – Rod Borup, for outstanding performance as the director of the Fuel Cell Consortium for Performance and Durability, of Los Alamos National Lab. Melanie Caton, for outstanding contributions to the advancement of hydrogen infrastructure including installation of the advanced hydrogen technology station in Washington, D.C., from NREL.
Next for Cy Fujimoto and Yu Seung Kim, Sandia National Lab and Los Alamos National Lab, for outstanding technical contributions and achievements in developing alkaline exchange membrane fuel cell technology. I talked about that earlier in the plenary. And Katrina Groth, Sandia National Labs, for outstanding leadership and technical contributions to hydrogen safety and risk assessments. You'll hear a lot more about the HyRAM tool coming up. And Jeff Long and Craig Brown, UC Berkeley and NIST – I think there's a delay here – for outstanding achievements in adsorbent-based hydrogen storage materials research – this too I talked about earlier. And finally Joe Pratt again, for outstanding dedication to the advancement of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies in the early market including through the world's first pierside maritime fuel cell power system that you'll hear more about in the market transformation effort.
So if the winners can please all stand and be recognized. Let's give them all a big round of applause. [Applause] And also, I personally apologize for all the pretend meetings that we scheduled this morning so that all of you would show up and then I didn't show up to the meeting. So we always have to come up with something so that we can get you here without telling you that you're getting an award. And we will be taking the photo as Christy will explain later after this in Delaware B during the lunch break. So now I'll turn it over to Christy to announce the VTO subprogram awards. Okay. Yeah. Do you see it?
Christy Cooper:
No, wait, we have some technical difficulties up here so if you –
Sunita Satyapal:
So you can't see it here, but we have one other person who we managed to get him to change his flight so he'd get here. And even though you can't see it on the screen, sorry, Mike, but you have to stand. It's Mike Ulsh from National Renewable Energy Laboratory for [Applause] outstanding contributions in quality control and manufacturing of hydrogen fuel cell technologies. And I personally apologize for making you come to the meeting this morning and not showing up to it. But thank you, Mike.
Christy Cooper:
All right, so now we're gonna move to the Vehicle Technologies subprogram awards. And again, in the interest of time, if you would please hold your applause until everyone has been announced. And this year's award winners are, pause for the dramatic delay, there we go, the Wireless Power Transfer R&D Team from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, for demonstrating the first 20-kilowatt wireless charging system for light duty electric vehicles with end-to-end efficiency of over 90 percent.
Kevin Bennion from the National Renewable Energy Lab, for his expertise and leadership in thermal management of motor designs, a critical asset to our Electric Drive Technologies Research Team. John Czubay of General Motors, in appreciation of his leadership as co-chair of the U.S. DRIVE Electrical/Electronics Technical Team, a valuable consensus builder.
John Dec from Sandia National Lab, in appreciation of his technical leadership in diesel combustion and pioneering partial fuel stratification to enable HCCI-like combustion. Robert McCune, a consultant at USAMP and formerly at Ford, in appreciation of his essential contributions to organizing and executing the Magnesium Front End Research and Development Program.
Eric Nyberg of PNNL, for his leadership, enthusiasm, and tireless effort over ten years in support of the Magnesium Front End R&D Program. And finally, last but not least Marcy Rood from Argonne National Laboratory, in recognition of distinguished service in support of DOE's national Clean Cities program and alternative fuel and advanced vehicle deployment. Winners, would you please stand to be recognized. Let's all give them a round of applause. [Applause]
And as Sunita mentioned, we'll ask all of the subprogram award winners to please very quickly join us in Delaware B in just a few minutes during the break to receive your award and we'll do a picture there too. So in addition to our individual office awards, we have a very special joint award. If Sunita wouldn't mind joining me up here. So our offices would like to jointly recognize the U.S. DRIVE Cradle-to-Grave Analysis Working Group with a special recognition award for their outstanding technical contributions and collaborative efforts to the U.S. DRIVE Cradle-to-Grave life cycle greenhouse gas emissions cost and technology readiness analyses of current and advanced vehicle fuel pathways. We've got a number of working group members so as you can imagine consensus building is sometimes a challenge and they managed to do it, which is one of the reasons why we're happy to present this award.
The working group members are Marcus Alexander, Steve Barnhart, Mary Biddy, Eric Bunnelle, Amgad Elgowainy, Dave Gohlke, Jeongwoo Han, Amit Kapur, Todd Ramsden, Herie Soto, Ian Sutherland, Laura Verduzco, and Tim Wallington. I'll also recognize Fred Joseck and Jake Ward from our office who helped shepherd this group along. A tremendous effort. I think Amgad Elgowainy from Argonne is going to come up and accept this award on behalf of the group. [Applause]
Well I think this brings our award ceremony to its conclusion. Thank you so much for helping us recognize these extremely hardworking individuals. I'm gonna turn it over to Reuben for some very brief closing remarks.
Reuben Sarkar:
Okay, congratulations again to all of our award winners and thank you to all of our plenary speakers for their valuable insights. We'll have time for questions during the plenaries later this afternoon and our directors are gonna be here all week if you have any questions.
On behalf of DOE, I wanted to thank all of you who will serve as reviewers this week. This is a very important task and your thoughtful contributions will have and will continue to shape the future of our programs. As you can imagine, it takes a lot of effort to put on an event such as this because hundreds of projects and reviewers have to be coordinated. So if you could please join me in acknowledging the lead organizers for this year including the Alliance for Technical Services, ATS, and Oak Ridge Associated Universities, or ORAU, as well as – and I'm not sure if we should have each of the folks stand here, but Michelle Villanosa, Leah Fisher, Erika Gupta, Terry Levinson, Kristen Nawoj, Neil Popovich, Carol Schutte and Michael Weismiller, if you could all just please stand up and give a round of applause. [Applause]
And just a few more comments here. I want to make sure that you all heard, and Christy already pointed this out, a very exciting event that we're happening here in July. This will be our inaugural Sustainable Transportation Summit. It's gonna take place July 11 and 12 at the Convention Center here in D.C. and it's gonna bring together a lot of transportation and mobility thought leaders to discuss the future of transportation, mobility, and energy.
And so very different than this type of environment where you're actually reviewing the kinds of work that we're doing, the projects we have in place. This is very vision forward to the year 2050 to say what does the future look like and to really hear from some of the most engaging thought leaders on the subject. And so we hope to see you there.
And so now we're gonna take a very short break. We're gonna reconvene here at 3:30. The Vehicle Technologies Office program overviews are gonna be held in Salon 2 and the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell program overviews are gonna be held in Salon 3. And so I want to just thank you and wish you all a great AMR week. Thank you. [Applause]