[News Release]
This year’s speaker line-up is focused on “Women in STEM”
NEWBERRY, Ind. (October 1, 2019) — The Battery Innovation Center (BIC) will be hosting energy storage community members at its 4th annual BIC Industry Stakeholder Luncheon on October 24, 2019 at the Crane Bay Event Center in downtown Indianapolis. The event is open to all levels, from executives to students to technicians, who work in the battery technology industry. A morning networking session will take place prior to the luncheon featuring company booths, product demonstrations, and university poster sessions.
This year’s speaker portion will focus on “Women in STEM” and will feature highly accomplished women in the energy sector. The keynote speaker, Fran Lockwood, PhD., is the senior vice president and chief technology officer of Valvoline. She leads global new product development and technical support for Valvoline’s automotive brands and sits on the board of Valvoline’s joint venture with Cummins Inc in China. Lockwood, a chemical engineer with more than 40 years of experience in lubricants research and development, has led the development and commercialization for hundreds of new products and is the co-author of more than 70 publications, 25 U.S. patents and 58 foreign patents.
Additional speakers for the luncheon program include Leila Madrone, founder and chief technology officer of Sunfolding, and Tomoko Ito, president and chief executive officer of InQs Co., Ltd. Both women are leaders in their field, building breakthrough energy storage technologies in solar and IoT industries. Ito will be accompanied onstage by InQs Chief Marketing Officer Rike Wootten to aid in translation of her presentations from Japanese to English.
“We put a great deal of thought into our speaker line-up this year. The theme of ‘Women in STEM’ took shape after we happened to build this list of accomplished women based solely on their work and reputation as trailblazers in the energy storage sector,” says Ashley Gordon, advanced battery manufacturing team manager at the BIC.
In addition to the luncheon speakers, the program will also include a panel titled “Energy Storage Technology Commercialization.” The panel will be moderated by Rafael Sanchez, RTV6 reporter and anchor. Sanchez has been reporting on the BIC throughout the year, including a feature for RTV6’s “Hiring Hoosiers” initiative.
The following battery technology professionals will be participating in the panel:
- Aaron Winteregg – Staff Electrical Engineer, Ultra Electronics USSI
- Cary Hayner – Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, NanoGraf Corp.
- John Stocker – Senior Vice-President, Federal Solutions; Lynntech, Inc.
- Les Alexander – Vice President, Government, Defense, & R&D; Navitas Systems
- Paige Johnson – Chief Executive Officer, Ten-Nine Technologies
- Bosch (TBD)
The final portion of the luncheon will be dedicated to the presentation of two “Charged for Innovation” awards the BIC team gives each year at the event. Candidates are chosen by BIC stakeholders and the award recognizes one scale-up and one start-up for their innovative, forward-thinking ideas and work in the energy storage space. The 2018 “Charged for Innovation” scale-up award went to Underwriter’s Laboratories (UL), a global safety certification lab, and the start-up award went to Lightning Motorcycles, an all-electric motorsport company.
“Each year our goal is to have a larger turnout than the last. The need for workforce development in the energy storage sector is evidence of the industry’s rapid growth in recent years, and the need for this promotion of battery technology innovation, networking, talent recruitment, and education is never more evident as we approach our fourth year hosting the event,” said Ben Wrightsman, chief executive officer of BIC. Because of this identified need, the BIC added a morning networking session to the event in 2018, which will continue this year. The morning networking session is an exhibit show-style event and will include a university poster boarding section and product demonstrations. On display will be a Tesla automobile, electric motorcycle from Lightning Motorcycles, and a Cummins semi-truck.
Last year’s event drew almost 200 attendees and representation from over 75 companies, including Cummins, SGS Tech, MTD Products, Andretti Autosport, PPG, and more.
Please visit bicindiana.com/bicluncheon2019 to register and for more information on the 2019 BIC Industry Stakeholder Luncheon, including full speaker bios. Registration is currently open to the public and each ticket includes full admission to the day’s events, along with breakfast and lunch.
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About Battery Innovation Center
The Battery Innovation Center is a public-private partnership and not-for-profit organization that partners with leadership from commercial enterprises, world-class universities, and government organizations to focus on rapid development, testing and commercialization, and training of safe, reliable and lightweight energy storage systems for commercial and defense organizations. Incubated and launched by Energy Systems Network (ESN) – a nonprofit based in Indianapolis focused on growing the advanced energy technology and mobility sectors – the Battery Innovation Center provides both a virtual collaborative network of capabilities needed for development of next generation energy storage solutions as well as a state-of-the-art $15.6 million, 40,000 sq. ft advanced energy research lab. The BIC is also home to Underwriters Laboratories (UL) Battery Energy Storage Test lab (BEST). For more information, please visit www.bicindiana.com.
Contacts:
Paige Geer, Manager of Communications, Energy Systems Network
Phone: 317-223-0925 Email: paige@energysystemsnetwork.com
Ben Wrightsman, CEO, Battery Innovation Center
Email: ben.wrightsman@bicindiana.com
