PLENARY SPEAKERS
Sofía De-León Almaraz
H2 Economy
Sofía De-Léon Almaraz is a multidisciplinary researcher and Associate Professor in the Department of Supply Chain Management at Corvinus University of Budapest, where she researches sustainable, reliable, and resilient hydrogen supply chains. She holds degrees in Industrial Engineering and Social Psychology, a Master’s degree in Administration, and a PhD in Process and Environmental Engineering from the University of Toulouse. Her doctoral research, initiated in 2011 at the Laboratoire de Génie Chimique of the Institut National Polytechnique de Toulouse, focused on the prospective design of sustainable hydrogen supply chains and was awarded the Léopold Escande Prize in 2014.
Over the past decade, Sofía has developed interdisciplinary research at the intersection of supply chain management, mathematical optimization, sustainability, and energy systems. Her work examines how hydrogen production, storage, transportation, and distribution can be designed to balance economic, environmental, and social objectives. She has applied multi-objective optimization, life-cycle assessment, social cost–benefit analysis, and reliability assessment to explore the challenges in hydrogen supply chain development. In particular, she has advanced the integration of social criteria into hydrogen supply-chain modeling. Her recent work also examines cooperation and competition among stakeholders in hydrogen networks, using the concept of “coopetition” to explore behavioral dynamics.
has been a member of the European Hydrogen Sustainability and Circularity Panel of the Clean Hydrogen Partnership since 2024.
Daniel Melideo
H2 Transport, Distribution and Storage
Daniel Melideo is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Energy, Systems, Territory and Construction Engineering (DESTEC), University of Pisa. His research focuses on hydrogen technologies and energy systems, with particular emphasis on modelling and optimizing hydrogen refuelling and storage processes using validated CFD and 0D models. Previously, he spent eight years as a Scientific Officer at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Petten (the Netherlands), working on hydrogen safety and serving as responsible for the HIAD 2.0 incident and accident database. He is a member of the European Hydrogen Safety Panel supporting the Clean Hydrogen Partnership and has authored numerous publications and contributed to European and international R&D projects on hydrogen storage, utilization, and safety.
Ravi Fernandes
H2 Safety and Risk Assessment
Ravi Fernandes is the Head of the Physical Chemistry Department at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), Germany’s National Metrology Institute. He is also an Honorary Professor at TU Braunschweig in Germany, IIT Guwahati, and NIT Meghalaya in India. Before joining PTB in 2013, he held academic and research positions at the University of Göttingen, the Max Planck Institute, Sandia National Laboratories in the USA, and RWTH Aachen University, where he was Professor of Physico-Chemical Fundamentals of Combustion.
He received his M.Sc. from Goa University in 1998, and his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in 2003. Dr. Fernandes’ research focuses primarily on chemical kinetics and precision measurement science, with a particular focus on energy conversion, sustainable fuels, hydrogen, and emerging energy carriers. He has made significant contributions to international scientific collaboration and serves on several scientific and metrology committees. He serves on the advisory board of the German Institute of Standards (DIN) Committee for Material Testing FAM, Editorial Board of the Journal Measurement and Executive Board of the Fuels Joint Research Group. In recognition of his contributions to reaction kinetics and the application of precision measurement to combustion chemistry of alternative and sustainable fuels, he was recently elected a Fellow of the Combustion Institute.
Massimo Santarelli
H2 End Use
Professor Massimo Santarelli, PhD in Thermodynamics and Heat Transfer, Full Professor at the Department of Energy at the Polytechnic of Turin. Affiliated with the Royal Polytechnic of Stockholm (KTH), the Polytechnic University of Barcelona (UPC) and the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Researcher at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) and the National Research Center (CNR). Coordinator of the PhD School in Energy of Politecnico di Torino. Author of about 350 articles in international journals and conferences (h-index = 68). His main research activities focus on complex innovative systems (thermochemical and electrochemical processes and technologies) applied to the energy sector: energy-to-X paradigms and associated technologies. Coordinator of the STEPS (Synergies of Thermo-chemical and Electro-chemical Power Systems) laboratory, the HySyLab (Hydrogen System Lab) and the CCL (CO2 Circle Lab) laboratory of the Politecnico di Torino. Coordinator of the European projects SOFCOM (FCH1-JU 2010 call), DEMOSOFC (FCH2-JU 2014 call) and REMOTE (FCH2-JU 2017 call), SUSTAIN-ARCTIC (INFRA 2025 Call) Partner in European projects (PROCEED, AMPS, ELECTROLIFE, H2START, H2SHIFT, IMAGHYNE, CRAVE-H2, HYACADEMY, GREENSKILLSFORH2, HYDRA, ECOLEFINS, TULIPS, BEST4Hy, SUBLIME, ICO2CHEM, COMSOS, TEACHY, ENEFIELD, ENFICA-FC, BRISK II, SELECT-CD, Explore Energy, Virtual Hub, MARS-EV), coordinator of several national projects and research projects with Companies. Coordinator of the Erasmus+ HySET Master's degree "Hydrogen Systems and Enabling Technologies". Partner of the InnoEnergy SELECT master. Partner of the Erasmus+ DENSYS Master's degree. Member for Italy of ISO/TC 197 "Hydrogen technologies" and IEC-TC 105 "Fuel cells".