Abstract
The 21st century brings with it staggering challenges for more advanced energy technologies that are abundant, clean, and economical. Transforming the ways we generate, supply, transmit, store, and use energy are the paramount opportunities for the world in the coming decades. To convert sunlight to fuel, efficiently store energy, or enable a new generation of energy production and utilization technologies requires the development of new materials and processes of unprecedented functionality and performance. Advances in research and development serve as the foundation for transformational energy technology. In November 2015, the Basic Energy Sciences (BES) Advisory Committee released a Report, Challenges at the Frontiers of Matter and Energy: Transformative Opportunities for Discovery Science. The report identified emerging grand challenges for basic energy sciences research whose impacts promise to be transformative for science and energy. This talk will focus on grand science challenges to energize a new era of innovation.

Speaker Biography
Harriet Kung has served as the Director of Basic Energy Sciences (BES) in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science since June 9, 2008. With an annual budget of more than $1.8 billion in 2016, BES is the leading supporter of fundamental research in materials sciences, chemistry, geosciences, and aspects of physical biosciences in the United States. BES is also a major supporter of scientific user facilities, including the nation's premier x-ray synchrotron light sources, neutron scattering facilities, and nanoscale science research centers. These facilities served more than 14,000 users annually in 2015, and they provide the tools for the preparation and examination of materials and the study of their physical and chemical properties and transformations. Kung received her Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Cornell University. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the Presidential Meritorious Executive Rank Award in 2010.

Speaker Biography
Zhiling Tian is vice general manager at China Iron and Steel Research Institute Group (CISRI). He joined CISRI in 1991 as a research engineer. In 2001, he was promoted as vice president of CISRI in charge of R&D and post graduate education. Tian has been an expert in the national high-tech program for advanced structural materials, where he was in charge of several projects, for the past 15 years.

Abstract
The Chinese energy industry has experienced rapid development in the past decades. China currently has become the world’s biggest energy producer and the largest energy consumer. This presentation reviews the development history of Chinese energy industries and their necessarily related critical materials since 1978, with the emphasis on the newly built 600+℃ ultra-super-critical (UCS) fossil fire power plants and pressurized water reactor nuclear power plants in China, which are the world’s most advanced level technically, and which already effectively contributed to energy-saving and emission-reduction for China and the whole world. Meanwhile, the future outlook for materials-related energy issues through 2025, including fossil and nuclear power, gas turbine, and oil and gas in China will also be explored.

Speaker Biography
Fabrice Stassin is managing director of the Energy Materials Industrial Research Initiative (EMIRI) Association. He holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry & Materials Science as well as a Master in Management from the University of Liège in Belgium. He worked a few years as managing director of a Belgium-based RTO active in White Biotech and later as strategy consultant for the chemical industry in the Netherlands in the fields of innovation, sustainability, and value creation through mergers and acquisitions. In 2008, he joined Umicore (an industrial leader in advanced materials and recycling) as innovation manager covering clean technologies. Since 2012, he has been part of the Brussels-based team of Umicore Government Affairs focusing on Energy Materials. Stassin was instrumental in the development of the EMIRI Association, which he has managed since 2014. EMIRI represents more than 60 organizations (industry, research, and associations) active in advanced materials for low-carbon energy. The association contributes to industrial leadership of developers and producers of advanced materials for low-carbon energy technologies materials by shaping an appropriate innovation, manufacturing, and energy policy framework at the European level.

Abstract
This presentation will discuss the key enabling role that the industry of advanced materials plays in facilitating the development and deployment of low carbon energy technologies in Europe, while creating growth and jobs. After a short introduction to the Energy Materials Industrial Research Initiative, this presentation will address global trends in low-carbon energy technologies, highlight elements of the European sector of advanced materials for low-carbon energy technologies, and outline recommendations to solve European energy challenges and ensure industrial leadership of the sector. This talk will also present the key priorities from industry for more effective and efficient innovation on advanced materials for low-carbon energy in Europe.